


There is No Grief

by SophieHatter



Category: Bittersweet Thing
Genre: Awkward Romance, Both literally and figuratively, Dom/sub Undertones, Eventual Smut, F/M, Florists, Gentle femdom, Human Trafficking, Implied/Referenced Incest, Mutual Masturbation, New York City, Organized Crime, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Recovery, Russian Mafia, Safe Sane and Consensual, She knows what he needs, Size shame, Trauma, and what he needs is to be taken in hand, size queen, socks off, socks on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2019-10-28 18:00:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17792114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SophieHatter/pseuds/SophieHatter
Summary: Kolya and Sasha were all Sergei had in the world and, for them, he would do anything, be anything.There was no room, he told himself, for wants or needs. Every day was a day to work off his debt to his boss, the man who owned New York, and his sister, dark haired with dark eyes full of grief.There was no room for anyone else in his life, there was barely room enough for him.Until one night, flowers brought him Koshka.Where there is love or advice there is no grief - Russian Proverb





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovestuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovestuck/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Bittersweet Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980121) by [lovestuck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovestuck/pseuds/lovestuck). 



> Much thanks to lovestuck who indulges my fascination with Sergei and my need to give him more story.

A familiar SUV pulled into the empty space in front of his and shut its lights off, the engine still running.

> _N: I got her. Go see your sister. Do something nice, take her flowers._
> 
> _S: It’s November._
> 
> _N: Something bright. Look, the light’s still on._

The light was still on, Sergei mused. He watched the woman inside the little flower shop move around, hauling pots and buckets into place in the shop’s window. He watched her, sometimes, while he was waiting for Ellie to show up for her shift at the Roastery. The florist mostly worked alone in the evenings. He kept an extra sharp eye on the street, then, in case someone should try to rob her as she closed up.

> _N: I see El. Go on._

Sergei saw Ellie by the door, her coat on, bag slung over her shoulder. She waved to her friends and then began walking back to campus. In front, Nico turned on the lights of his SUV and pulled out heading towards the field where he usually picked her up.

> _S: Night Boss._

The florist’s light was still on, the woman still working. Sergei slid from the warm inside of his vehicle and crossed the street. The Roastery was half full of students studying, or pretending to. He watched them, saw them holding hands, touching under the tables, paying attention to more important lessons than the ones in their books.

As it should be. The young should play at love while they could. The world had harsher lessons to come, as they had come for Sasha.

The bell over the door rang out as he pushed it open, the warm air smelling of fresh green things, sweet and sharp, a contrast to the bleak cold of the street. It rang again as he let the door swing closed, eyes roving over the depleted displays, at a loss as to what he should take his sister.

“Oh, I'm sorry, we’re closed. My fault, I forgot to lock the door.” An auburn haired woman in her mid thirties stepped out of a backroom, wiping her hands on the apron at her waist.

“You should lock door. Bad people could come in.” His rough English made him sound stupid, sometimes, but this was more embarrassing than usual. He shrugged and half turned to the door, “I will go.”

The woman shook her head, her loose ponytail flicking onto her shoulder. “No, don’t. It’s my fault for leaving the door unlocked. How can I help you?” With her eyes still on him, she fished in an apron pocket for a pair of glasses, sliding them on to her face.

Sergei hesitated. His large frame and oversized features normally made women nervous around him, but she was smiling up at him, her hazel eyes flecked with green, magnified by her glasses.

“I need flowers, for my sister,” he told her, hesitant.

“What does she like?” The woman asked.

“I don’t know. She has been ... sick. For long time. She needs to smile.” Clumsy words. By his side, Sergei flicked his fingers against each other, annoyed at himself.

The woman moved towards a bucket sitting in the middle of the floor. “Something happy, then. Did you both grow up in Russia?” She asked as she began to gather a bouquet.

“Yes. But we come to New York a while ago. Try to have better life here.” He followed her, turning as she moved around the shop, gathering together blooms in white, pink and purple.

When her hands were full, she approached Sergei, holding the flowers out for him to see. “Something like this?”

His mouth came open and then he drew it shut, nodding. Each of the flowers were small, like something they might have seen at their grandmother’s house on summer visits, when they played in the long grass. “This, this make her happy. Thank you.”

The florist gave him a broad smile, so sudden and glowing that he smiled back in reflex. “I’ll just finish it up for her.” At the counter, she laid the flowers down, cut a long piece of pink ribbon and tied the flowers up. The result looked like a hand picked bouquet. “Will it be long until you see her?”

“No,” Sergei said, approaching the counter. “I go to see her now.”

“I won’t put them in plastic, then. They are nicer with just a ribbon.”

“They are very beautiful. How much?” Sergei reached into his jacket for his wallet.

The woman looked up at him, squinting a little as she did the mental calculations. “It’s the end of the day, so $45.”

Sergei pulled three twenties from his wallet and handed them to her. “No change. I bother you when you were closed.” She hesitated, reluctant to take the bills. “Please,” he implored. “I wish it. Worth extra if they make my sister smile.”

She took the bills, opening the register and then handed him the bouquet. “You should come back and tell me what she thinks of them,” the woman invited.

He was here two or three times a week. It would be easy to stop by again. “Ok. I will tell you how she likes them. Then get her more.”

The woman grinned and then handed him a card from the counter. He peered at it. “Catriona — like Katerina, no?”

“That’s right. Call me Cat, though.”

“Cat? Like _koshka_?” When Cat appeared puzzled, he made a little meow. “Koshka.”

When she laughed, her eyes glittered and her whole body shook with the amusement. Sergei found himself wanting to linger, to offer to get her coffee from next door or wait for her to finish and suggest dinner somewhere warm and busy, so that she could feel free to laugh like that again.

“Sergei,” he said, instead, holding out his hand to her. Cat’s fingers were warm and slightly rough, long and supple in his meaty palm. “I come back. Tell you how flowers make her smile.”

Cat nodded and reluctantly pulled away. “I look forward to it.”

He hovered, unwilling to turn and leave the green warmth of the shop for the cold chill outside.

“Go,” Cat said gently, “Don’t keep your sister waiting.”

He swallowed and then bobbed his head, heading for the door. As he pulled it open, he turned back to her, “You lock it, now.”

“I will,” Cat agreed, reaching under the counter and jingling a set of keys. “G’night, Sergei.”

The door swung shut with a final tinkle of the bell and Sergei crossed the street to his car. He paused by the hood and looked back, Cat was standing at the door, keys in hand. She waved as he looked and he waved shyly in return, then got in his car and secured the bouquet beside him on the passenger seat.


	2. Chapter 2

Stopping at the red light by the Trinity Campus, Sergei checked his watch. He was early. He liked to have time to watch the street.

The light changed to green and he moved forward, turning at the next intersection and coasting slowly, looking for a park in front of Ellie’s coffee shop. Sunday afternoons were easier than weeknights, there were less students on the university campus.

Pulling up, he turned the motor off and took his time scanning the street, noting each of the other cars, looking for snow piled by their tyres, a tell tale sign that they’d been parked there all day.

When he was satisfied, Sergei settled back in his seat, letting his gaze take in the Roastery and the little flower shop next door. He read the name on the window.

 _Cattails_.

 _Huh_ , he chuffed to himself, getting the joke, long spears of the reedy plant painted on the glass, framing the display in the window.

In the language of his childhood they were _proso_. He and Sasha had waded barefoot into the ankle deep mud of the canal to pull up the yard long stems. Then they had fought imaginary enemies, and sometimes each other, like the legendary bogatyrs, valiant knights who defended Russia from the Mongols and the Turks a thousand years ago.

That memory may as well have been from a thousand years ago, for all that was left of their innocence. Sergei’s had been offered up as a naive young teen, hungrily consumed by the group of men he called family. That same family had taken Sasha, Maksim telling Sergei that all women were whores, one way or another. Yet Sasha had only been a girl, _kotenok_ , a kitten. Too young to be called a woman.

Rubbing at his chin, Sergei tried to relieve his rising anger with a long exhalation. That was the past. He had told Cat so the other night. _Try to have better life here._ Kolya had given them that. Had given Sasha and Sergei another chance at living.

Except that Maksim was here, prowling around Kolya’s Ellie. A beautiful, innocent kotenok, just like Sasha had been.

The thought of Maks calling Ellie a _whore_ made Sergei growl, low and long and feral. Before he could stop himself, his fist came down hard on the moulding of the SUV’s door, the plastic deforming and then bouncing back into shape. The ache spread through his hand and Sergei rubbed it against the steering wheel, reminding himself that he was a grown man now, sworn to the one who owned New York. That same man was the only one Sergei would ever allow to knock him down in the ring. Sometimes Kolya even managed to best him for real.

The thought of their last bout brought a smile to the corner of Sergei’s mouth. Kolya laughing, feinting in and then dancing away, taunts slipping from his lips as easy as breathing. Sergei waiting, patient and still, for Kolya to finish his display for the audience and start actually fighting. _Fucking peacock_ , Sergei had told him. _Quit strutting and hit me._

Before Ellie, that had been. Before she had walked into Elysium, every tiny piece of her bursting with her father’s confidence, her balls nearly as big as his. Kolya’s kotenok, his gem, his treasure. As sweet and innocent as her balls were huge.

As if the thought had conjured them both, Sergei saw Kolya’s SUV pull up just past the corner. Saw Ellie rise in her seat, Kolya bending to meet her. It was clear enough for anyone with eyes: they were lovers. Sergei let his gaze drift to the sidewalk, cataloguing the parked cars again. Then Ellie slid out on to the pavement, slamming the SUV’s door and bouncing on the balls of her feet as she waved good bye.

Sergei couldn’t help but smile. When Kolya’s kotenok was happy, Kolya was happy. And that was all that Sergei cared about. Sasha, Kolya and, by extension, Ellie. They were all the people he had in the world. All the people that he needed.

Ellie walked cautiously down the sidewalk, wary for patches of ice. She passed in front of Cattails and Sergei caught a brief glimpse of Cat as she took something from the window display. He thought to pause and watch the florist, but he was here for Ellie. She pushed open the door of the Roastery and made her way behind the counter and into the back rooms. When Sergei looked back at Cattails Cat was no longer visible.

He started the engine, letting the heater warm the interior again, rubbing absently at his sore hand, eyes on the Roastery, allowing himself the occasional glance at the shop beside it. Sergei didn’t see Cat again until the lights went out and she stood on the threshold, locking the front door. He watched her walk to a royal blue Mini and get inside, driving away a few minutes later.

Next time Sergei came by for Ellie’s shift he would tell Cat how much Sasha had loved the flowers. How she had smiled, her eyes clear and bright. How for a moment Cat’s flowers had conjured the innocent girl that he remembered from a thousand years ago.

 

* * *

  

> _N: Change of plans. I’m picking El up after her shift. You can go home early._
> 
> _S: Ellie not sleeping at her dorm?_
> 
> _N: Liam's going to watch Trinity. He can keep an eye out for Mak’s man._

 

Ellie would be spending the night with Kolya again. His boss must realise that Sergei knew. It wasn’t hard to work it out when Kolya kissed her in the front seat of his car like he was eating the girl out in reverse. Or when he flicked his phone on over and over, smiling like the sun rose just for him when her name appeared on the screen.

Maybe he thought no one knew. Or maybe Kolya hadn’t let himself know, yet. If it wasn’t so stupid to be denying it, Sergei would think it endearing.

So what if Maksim probably already knew, they had been slow to work him out. Didn’t mean a little caution outside his daughter’s school would go to waste.

Sergei snorted. Kolya was always the strutting peacock.

  

> _N: Go see Sasha._
> 
> _S: She is not expecting me._
> 
> _N: Take her flowers._  

 

Sergei glanced up at the florist’s dark storefront. It occurred to him that, had he known Kolya was going to pick Ellie up, he could have asked Cat to dinner. Told her how Sasha liked the flowers. Tried to make her laugh again.

  

> _S: Store closed._

 

Dark. An opportunity missed.

 

> _S: Ellie staying with you next weekend?_
> 
> _N: Probably. Why?_
> 
> _S: I try to make plans for dinner._
> 
> _N: Good. Sasha deserves a brother who treats her like a proper woman._

 

Sergei began to type a correction in response. Then he erased the message. One conversation, one handshake, one laugh. Something in him burned at the possible embarrassment if Cat said no.

It wasn’t enough, yet. It needed to grow, to become something.

 

> _S: When do you take your sisters out to dinner? I will call Sophie and tell her you want to meet._
> 
> _N: You wouldn’t dare. Tell Sasha she has to come to a Cordova dinner soon. Ma was asking to see her._
> 
> _S: What your mother wants_
> 
> _N: She gets. The sooner the better. Ma needs the distraction._

 

Or Kolya needs the distraction while he decides what Ellie is to him.

 

> _S: I will tell her. The therapist wants her to leave the apartment more._
> 
> _N: Then bring her to Ma’s. Or my place. We can have dinner together._
> 
> _S: Thank you._
> 
> _N: Any night I don’t have El._

 

Yes, Sergei agreed. He didn’t know how Sasha might react to learning her bogatyr, her knight in shining armour, was fucking his daughter. Sergei didn’t have the strength to see her face it. Not yet.

When Kolya could face it. When Sasha had met Cat. Maybe then.

Sergei’s mind kept revolving around the same names as he waited for Ellie’s shift to end.

Kolya. Ellie. Sasha. Cat. Maksim.

 _Koshka_.

He rolled the name, warm on his tongue. And warm in other places, long neglected. Renounced in disgust when Maksim had said _wh-_

 _Koshka_.

 _Koshka_ with the hazel eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone for reading, commenting and leaving kudos (and those of you who even liked and commented on Tumblr!)
> 
> Given my deep seated love for Sergei, I decided to continue with the self-indulgence and keep writing about him. 
> 
> I’ll be keeping a few paces behind Bittersweet Thing, to allow Lovestuck to grow her own story. And everything is cleared for spoilers, so you can feel safe reading about Sergei here and still getting every morsel of excitement out of BT.
> 
> <3


	3. Chapter 3

Kolya’s SUV pulled away, relieving Sergei of his duty. On the other side of the street, a trio of students slipped by, disappearing into the night. The girls were wearing too little against the chill, huddling into each other for warmth.

Sergei turned on the engine and left them to stumble on through the cold. Around the corner the space outside Cattails was free and he guided the vehicle into it. Switching off the headlights, he peered into the store’s interior, pleased to see light and movement within.

When he tried the door it was locked. A twitch of a smile found his lips. _Good._ Sergei thought about leaving, about waiting until Thursday and then he saw her through the doorway, working out the back.

His knock sounded loud and sudden in the dark and Sergei winced as Cat jumped and turned, puzzled. Approaching the door, her expression changed into a broad smile and she dragged keys from her apron pocket and opened the door.

“Now why would a tall, dark and handsome man be knocking on my door on a Tuesday night?”

Sergei fumbled for an answer. An apology? An excuse? An invitation?

“Sorry. I can go. I see you are closed but I wanted to stop and tell you thank you.”

Cat turned her face up to his, her eyes warm, inviting. “Come in. I’m just finishing up.” She opened the door wide for him and then locked it again.

“You remembered,” he told her. “That’s good.”

“And yet you are still coming into my shop when it’s closed.” Cat brushed a hand over his elbow as she passed him, returning to the back rooms. When he didn’t follow, she turned. “Is it ok if I tidy up while we talk?”

Sergei nodded and moved past the counter and to the doorway beyond. There was a nook of a room for the toilet and handbasin and then the workroom, as big as the front of the shop. Glass doored cold cabinets held buckets and buckets of blooms and shelves full of bundles of greenery. The smell of flowers was strong but not unpleasant, sharp and sweet.

Cat picked up a dustpan and continued cleaning off the huge bench that dominated the centre of the room. There were photos and sketches of flowers and arrangements all over the walls. Books and notebooks were piled up on a tall desk, a few of them weighing down a pile of paperwork.

“Is like an artist ... room,” Sergei fumbled for the correct English word. Cat paused and looked, waiting for him to go on. “A place for painting, making statues.” With a little gesture he tried to communicate shaping something with his hands and then felt foolish.

“A studio,” Cat agreed. “It’s a lot like that. Color, size, shape, weight, balance. Like sculpture.”

“Yes,” Sergei felt a small wash of relief. “A place for making beauty.”

Cat gazed at him and then made a little noise in the back of her throat and returned to cleaning the bench. He wanted to ask what that meant, what she was thinking, but it felt intrusive.

“I want to say thank you. Sasha liked the flowers very much.” Not the right words, not enough, not to explain to Cat that Sasha had smiled. Had smiled again and again as she saw the flowers, had been the real Sasha, dark and pure, brought back from the world that had stolen her. “She smiled, even with her eyes.”

“Then I am very glad to have helped her. Is she feeling any better?”

Sergei hesitated. Sasha’s story was a long one, a deep and private wound for them both. “She was in sickness for a very long time. Getting better will take a long time, too. We try for little things every day.”

“Can I make her something tonight?”

Shaking his head, Sergei replied, “No. I will see her Thursday. Take her to therapy, then we have dinner.”

“Then I'll make her something on Thursday. Will you be able to come by to get it? Or I can deliver it to you.” Cat reached into the centre of the bench and pulled a large, spiral date book toward her, turning the page to Thursday and making a note.

“I can come here. Should I pay you now?” Sergei was already reaching for his wallet.

“No,” Cat said easily. “I’ll wait and see what I can find at the market. Something just for her.”

“Thank you.” His hands dropped back to his sides, empty and with nothing to do. Cat returned the book to the centre of the bench and reached for a broom.

“I can sweep,” Sergei offered.

Cat hesitated, obviously assessing his proficiency in brooms. “That would be great, thank you.”

Sergei took the broom as she offered it and moved to a corner, working in a methodical way that pleased Cat. She left him to it, beginning to stack the empty buckets and trays from the day’s stock.

Sergei had swept half the room before he spoke again. “I would like to say thank you.”

Cat paused, sensing there was more in that simple statement. “You already have.”

“More thank you. Dinner. On Friday.” He looked hopefully at her, stomach falling as she shook her head.

“Friday nights I don’t go out. I work here late and then start very early on Saturday.” Seeing Sergei’s face go expressionless, she hastened to add. “But Tuesdays, Tuesdays are a good night for me.”

“Tuesday,” Sergei repeated. ”Tuesday is tonight.”

“Tonight is good for me,” Cat said hopefully, “If it’s good for you?”

“I ... I don’t have a reservation.”

“It’s Tuesday night. I think we’ll find somewhere.” Her smile was gentle, her cheeks flushed with amusement.

“I’ll finish this.”

Cat agreed, “We’re nearly done.”

Sergei swept and Cat moved from stacking buckets and trays to examining the date book and making notes on her phone. By the time he’d binned the sweepings and put the broom back in its spot, Cat was getting her coat and bag.

“You should come sweep for me every night, then I'd do Sasha’s flowers for free.”

Sergei went to say something and then he realised that she was teasing him. A warmth settled into his chest and relief that he maybe had read Cat’s signals right.

They both paused, looking at each other and then Cat reached up to touch his cheek. “When you smile, it goes all the way to here,” she marvelled.

He blinked in surprise and then her touch was gone, nothing but a butterfly’s warmth left behind.

“Come on,” Cat urged, already in the doorway, grasping her keys. Sergei followed, scanning the street as Cat locked the door. Then she turned to him, eyes running up and down his frame, sizing him up. “We better take your car, I'm not sure that my Mini could do your proportions justice.”

“Just here,” Sergei said, unlocking his SUV, following her lead in a slightly dazed state. He held the passenger door open for her, closing it and then moving around to his side, mind running through options for dinner. Expensive, no, but not a diner or bar. Somewhere warm and busy, friendly.

_David’s_. 

 

* * *

 

“This was not what I expected,” Cat told him as she added chilli shrimp to her plate.

“It is very good food,” Sergei agreed.

David’s was a basement restaurant, nothing but a glowing neon sign and bright red doorframe at street level. Below, the expansive room was lavishly decorated in a throwback style to the Chinese restaurants of the 80’s. Kolya had once told him that he’d come here as a child and it had looked exactly the same. Sergei could believe it.

“Mmm, it is,” Cat nodded, “But I meant Chinese. I thought you might have some secret Russian restaurant to show me.”

“You want to eat Russian food?” Sergei paused, a little surprised.

“I want to know what you like, have you teach me about it.” She took a bite from her chopsticks, chewing thoughtfully. “Unless you don’t like Russian food.”

Sergei shrugged. “Russia is a very big place, when it was the USSR, even bigger. There are many Russian foods.”

Cat nodded. “Of course, like there are many types of Chinese food.”

“The same. So, my kind of food, my family’s food, is hard to find. I cook some, Sasha cooks some. And Mrs Cordova, she cooks very well. I’ll ask her if you can come to dinner.”

“Who’s Mrs Cordova?” Cat reached for one of the plates in the middle of the table.

“My boss’ mother. She comes from Russia to New York when she was a young lady. Kolya, he was born here. The Cordovas are very good people. Good to me and Sasha. Like family, now.”

Cat went to speak, paused as the waiter refilled their water and then went on. “You make your own family when you leave the rest behind. I moved to New York when I was six. I don’t really remember Ireland and Aileen, my sister, doesn’t remember it at all.”

“Did you have family here?”

Shaking her head, Cat said, “Mam came here in secret. We had very little to do with the Irish community growing up. I didn’t even visit Ireland until my 20’s.”

“I understand,” Sergei replied, his hand stilling on the table top, stroking the edge of his unused spoon, steering the conversation away from family secrets. “You said you work late Friday and early on Saturday. Why is that?”

Cat went with the change of topic. “Weddings. And functions, but mostly weddings. The weekend is very busy for florists, it’s when I have the most people working for me. And how I started out, too.”

“You were a flower apprentice?” Sergei asked, clearly amused by the phrasing.

Laughing, bright eyes flashing, Cat nodded. “Yes. A flower apprentice. I’m calling my trainees that from now on.”

Warmth filled Sergei, he could watch her laugh like that all night. His initial apprehension had faded quickly in her presence. Being with Cat felt easy, like floating free.

“You always want to be a florist? Even when you were small?” He indicated the height of a young child with his hand.

“No,” she answered, looking down at her nearly empty plate, going quiet.

“You want to be man who fights fires, like me?” He didn’t know why he said it. Maybe just to tease her, to see her smile.

“You wanted to be a firefighter?” Cat asked, her face lifting again, her smile growing.

“Very much. I wanted to use the big water tube,” he stuttered and stopped, searching for the right word.

“Hose.” The word came out on a grin, tinged with good humour.

“Yes! The big water hose and save people from buildings on fire. My father, he wanted me to be engineer like him. Engineer a good job in Russia, very sensible. But I had little boy dreams.”  
  
Cat narrowed her eyes, looking him over. “But you don’t look like an engineer and I don’t think you’re a firefighter, either.”

“No,” he agreed. “I look after Kolya, Kolya’s family.” Running a fingertip over the table top, he thought about how to explain it without frightening her.

“Like a bodyguard? Security?” Cat suggested.

“Much like that.”

“Would be a pity to let all _that_ go to waste.”

Sergei looked up to see Cat eyeing his shoulders and chest. When she saw him looking, she pointedly ran her gaze down to his hands. She was leaning forward, reaching for his hand when she stopped, smile fading, and pretended that she had been reaching to brush a few grains of rice from the table top.

“You should be a boxer, with hands like those.”

Sergei turned his hand over, palm up, and slid it towards hers in invitation. “I am, but only with friends. Not for money. For training.”

“And at work?” Cat wondered, extending her fingers, coming to rest with her finger tips between his.

“Sometimes. But mostly just talk, look scary,” he gave a little laugh, self-deprecating. Eyes fixed on the place where her fingertips lay between his, Sergei licked his lips, feeling the first rise of nervousness since they had sat down at the table. “Not scare you?”

Cat shifted her hand a little closer, lifting her fingers, sliding, until they lay over his. He brushed her knuckles with the pad of his thumb, barely a whisper of skin over skin. Her fingers were long, almost as long as his, but slender and strong. Her complexion was so pale that he expected her touch to be cool, but instead Cat was warm and vibrant, full of life.

“You don’t scare me.” Her voice was quieter, meant just for him. “You just want your sister to smile. And, I think, to make me smile, too.”

Sergei swallowed, feeling flushed. He would not, _would not_ blush. He couldn’t meet her eyes but he knew, he could _feel her_ watching him.

Cat’s fingers slid along his, brushing at his palm, circling. With a surge, all the heat in him stopped rising and headed downwards. “I’m not scary, either,” she said.

Shifting, fighting the urge to reach below the table and adjust his growing erection, Sergei focused on Cat’s fingers. “No,” he agreed, caressing her knuckles again. “You’re Cat.”

 

* * *

 

Out on the street, Cat took his arm like they had done this a hundred times before, her hand tucked into the crook of his elbow.

Sergei liked it, liked walking this way better than trying to put his arm around her, which always felt awkward unless the woman was tall. This was better, Cat pressing against his side, the warmth of her tangible, even through their coats and gloves.

They rounded the corner, his SUV visible half way down the block, and Cat spoke for the first time since taking his arm.

“The other night, when you bought the flowers for Sasha, you called me something.”

“ _Koshka_ ,” the name slipped off his tongue without even thinking.

“Koshka,” she repeated.

Sergei glanced sideways and saw Cat smiling. “You like it?” He asked.

“When you say it,” she answered. “You say it properly.”

Embarrassed, he laughed.

Cat elbowed him. “Don’t laugh at me,” she teased.

“No, I laugh at me.” They took a few more steps before he spoke again, “I have been in New York a long time, but my English is still not very good. And then you, you like my Russian.”

“I do.”

“Koshka.”

Her hand at his elbow squeezed in response and he watched Cat duck her head, hiding her face. A few more steps to his car and then they stopped.

“Koshka,” he said softer, drawing out the sound, his head bent low enough for Cat to feel his warm breath brush her ear.

Leaning into him, Cat pressed her forehead into his upper arm, just like her namesake would do. Sergei brushed his hand gently over the crown of her head, barely disturbing a hair. They lingered and then parted, Sergei holding the door of the SUV open for her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How may I help you, Sir?”
> 
> Sergei gave the backroom a second look before taking in the young man. Thin and pale with a shock of pale brown hair that looked like he had given up the fight to tame it. Eighteen, maybe twenty, at best.
> 
> “Is Cat here?”
> 
> “I’d be happy to help you, sir,” he said, insistent. “We have some lovely fresh bouquets.”
> 
> Sergei decided against giving one of Cat’s employees a verbal roughing up. That kind of thing made a bad impression.

Thursday came and Sergei spent the time between lunch and the beginning of Ellie’s Roastery shift sitting outside Trinity. One of Maksim’s men sat in a silver Honda further down the street, revealing his presence every hour as he leant on the trunk and smoked a cigarette.

Sergei composed a mental text to Maksim.

> _Yours boys are sloppy. Hire some proper help._
> 
> _But you can’t. All the good men work for Kolya._

The good men in more ways than one. Kolya would never condone the kind of things Maksim had his people do.

Ellie left the campus and rounded the corner. Sergei pulled out, putting his SUV between her and the silver Honda. He drove slowly, a cautious driver taking it easy on roads already starting to ice. Passing the car where Liam was waiting, Sergei found a spot further down the street and pulled in.

Walking back to Cattails, Sergei mused that he had a pretty good cover for being on that street now he was becoming a regular customer of Cat’s.

The jingling of the door caught the attention of the young man behind the counter. Sergei glanced towards the backroom but couldn’t see anyone else.

“How may I help you, Sir?”

Sergei gave the backroom a second look before taking in the young man. Thin and pale with a shock of pale brown hair that looked like he had given up the fight to tame it but was probably intentionally styled that way. Eighteen, maybe twenty, at best.

“Is Cat here?”

“I’d be happy to help you, sir,” he said, insistent. “We have some lovely fresh bouquets.”

Sergei decided against giving one of Cat’s employees a verbal roughing up. That kind of thing made a bad impression. “Cat made special order for Sergei. Could you tell her I'm here. Please.”

With a disappointed slump of his shoulders, the kid disappeared into the backroom. Within moments, Cat had her head around the doorway.

“You don’t need to hang about out there! Come on back.”

Pausing just before the back room, Sergei let the kid pass him and, at the last moment, had a softening of heart. He held his hand out.

“Sergei,” he said.

The boy’s eyes went round as he fully comprehended Sergei’s size, readjusting his gaze upward twice before getting to Sergei’s face. “Uh, Owen. Pleased to meet you, sir.” His hand in Sergei’s was clammy and shaking slightly.

“Good kid.” Sergei tried to look friendly. “Thank you.” Letting go, he resisted the urge to pat Owen on the head like he did sometimes to annoy Liam.

Owen squeezed past him sideways, clearing the way for Sergei to see Cat standing at the workbench, tendrils of copper coloured hair curling around her face. Her apron covered the front of a flowered skirt that reached the top of her boots leaving just a sliver of skin exposed.

“Hello.” Sergei breathed deeply and the presence of Cat slid inside him, feeding a hunger he didn’t know he had.

It couldn’t have been only two days since she pressed a kiss to his cheek and said goodnight outside this shop, the light from the window display making her hair glow with amber and fire.

“Hey,” Cat responded, holding her hand out to him. Reflexively, he reached for her and she guided him closer, keeping a hold of his hand when he stopped in front of her.

“You are most beautiful,” Sergei told her and then cursed himself for being so predictable. He should have prepared something better to say when he saw her.

Cat ran her thumb over the back of his hand and Sergei noted that her eyes were nearly green in the late afternoon light. “Thank you for taking me to dinner. It was really lovely.”

“I enjoyed your company very much.” That was better, he thought, but then was lost again for what to say.

“I think I found something nice for Sasha.” Cat nodded towards a bouquet on the worktable, “Will she like these?”

Long stalks with hundreds of tiny purple buds surrounded lots of little glossy white flowers shaped like stars. Stems of pink and purple blooms with petals as delicate as tissue paper were scattered amongst the white stars. Wrapped around the stems was a rough woven cream cloth, tied off with butcher’s twine.

Sergei reached out to touch one of the white flowers, his large finger nearly eclipsing it. “Little stars. Sasha will love them.” He made to let go of Cat’s hand to get his wallet. “How much?”

Cat held on to him tightly. “Dinner. Next Tuesday?” When Sergei looked between her and the bouquet, brow slightly furrowed, she squeezed his hand. “I’ll let you sweep, first.”

A blink and then Sergei smiled, finally getting her meaning. “I’ll be here at seven?”

“Perfect,” Cat said, rising up to lay a hand on one side of his face and a soft kiss on the other. Her lips lingered and then her hand remained on his cheek when she pulled away. “And, call me. Let me know how Sasha likes them.”

Sergei nodded, speechless. Cat’s fingers caressed his skin and then she was turning, reaching to hand him the flowers. He took them, brushing his fingers over her wrist as he let go.

Cat rocked back and forth a little, her expression pleased. “Go on. Don’t be late for therapy.”

“Alright,” Sergei nodded. “I tell you how it goes.”

Cat followed him to the doorway and waved when he looked back through the glass front window. His smile for her came easily. Then Owen said something and Cat shook her head, laughing and her expression changed to thoughtful before she turned away.

 

* * *

 

Climbing the stairs on his return from the gym, Sergei turned the phone over and over in his hand. 07:40. He wondered again if it was the right time to call Cat. But she had said she started work early.

One more time, he flicked to her number and this time pressed the call icon. She picked up just as he reached his floor.

“Cattails Florist.” Her voice had the slight echo that told him she had him on handsfree, probably in a car.

“Hello. It’s ... Sergei.” _It’s me_ would be assuming too much, right? Presumptuous to think that she would be waiting for his call.

“Morning.” Warm, like liquid amber, her voice poured into him. “What are you up to at this hour?”

“Um. Is it too early to call?”

Cat laughed, and if he thought her voice made him feel good, her laughter nearly made him float the last few yards to the door of his apartment.

“No, baby. I was awake at four thirty, before the sun. Friday morning at the market is cut throat. I have to be there the moment they open.”

“Oh,” he felt like he should have known that. “Big wedding this weekend?”

“Two smallish ones, not bad for November. I’m on my way to the shop.”

Sergei held the phone with his shoulder while he mixed up his morning powder and supplements. “I woke up much later. Go to the gym and now get ready for work.”

“How is Sasha?” Cat’s voice was muffled and then came clear again.

“She had good session and then nice dinner. She liked the flowers. Took them to show the therapist.” Leaning against the counter, he took a long swallow of the shake.

“She did?” Cat’s voice rose with excitement. “Wow, that is the nicest compliment.”

“She want to meet you and come see your shop. Sasha doesn’t like to go new places, so this is an even greater compliment.”

Cat laughed happily, Sergei smiled in response.

“You guys doing anything tonight?” She asked. “We’ll be finishing about nine. Sasha can see the shop and then we could find somewhere for a drink.”

Hesitating, Sergei’s grip tightened around the cup. “We can’t. Not tonight. We’re having dinner at Mrs Cordova’s.”

It was hard to hear Cat’s disappointment, but it also warmed something in his stomach. “Oh. That’s your boss’ mom, right?” When Sergei answered in the affirmative, she continued. “That must be good for her, spending time with family.”

“It is. She has problem with going out, leaving her apartment. The doctor encourages her to do more things but it is hard for her. But Mrs Cordova, she spoils Sasha, cooks things just for her.”

Sergei sipped his shake and, without really knowing why, added, “Sometimes it is too loud there for her. The Cordovas are a big family, with many people coming and going. The people, the noise can be too much and Sasha gets frightened.”

“Alright.” He heard the handbrake pull up and then Cat took him off speaker. “Another night, then. And we don’t go to a bar.”

The thing in his stomach fluttered, affection and appreciation welling up. Cat understood and it was ok.

“Do _you_ want to go out later?”

Surprised, Sergei asked, “You have early day tomorrow?”

“I know. But I liked the idea of seeing you.” When he didn’t answer straight away, Cat laughed nervously. “Sorry. Am I being too forward? I’m already on my third coffee.”

“Forward?” Sergei repeated, puzzled.

“Uh, shit,” she paused for a moment. “Too aggressive. Asking too much?”

The idea still puzzled him. “No. I like you. Like how you talk. Even when you drink too many coffees.”

“Three is too many?” Cat laughed again. “I couldn’t get through Fridays without at least four.”

“Well, the coffee place next door _is_ very good.” It was as close as he’d gotten to telling her how he’d come to walk into Cattails.

Cat was quiet for a moment. “So you can’t come by tonight?”

“I don’t know. I have to take Sasha home, first.” He wanted to, wanted to say yes. But Sasha came first and she hadn’t been anywhere except out with him for weeks.

“Call me? If it’s before ten?”

“Alright.” He looked at the time, ten minutes until he should be heading out and he still needed to shower and shave. “We should both go to work,” he told her with regret.

“I’m at work, but I should probably get out of the car.”

Sergei smiled, “I will call tonight. Have a good day.”

“You too. Talk soon.”

The call ended and he placed the phone down. The warmth of her voice went with him to the shower. Under the water, his touch became her hands, soaping his chest, lingering over his stomach. When his cock began to fill out, he grunted and turn the water all the way to cold, rinsing off the suds.

Cat belonged in a better place than in his head, with his hand on his dick.

 

* * *

 

She let him into the shop a little after nine thirty and they sat on stools at Cat’s workbench and ate the verhuny that Mrs Cordova had sent him home with. When he brushed the powdered sugar from her chin she leaned over to do the same to his collar.

“Did Mrs Cordova make these?” Cat asked, licking her fingertips clean as Sergei watched her lips.

“For Sasha. They’re her favourite, but she always sends us home with something.”

“I’m not eating Sasha’s share, am I?” Cat appeared stricken.

“No. Sasha has her own. I asked Mrs Cordova for more.” He grinned shyly, using his finger to gather up loose sugar from the wrapper and then eating it.

“You did? Did she ask why?”

Sergei shook his head, “No. She still thinks I am a growing boy.” She laughed so joyously that it made his heart flutter. He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers.

As her laughter faded, Cat propped her face up on her hand, gazing at him with smiling eyes. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Can I drive you home? You must be tired.”

She shook her head slowly and then smothered a yawn. “No. I need to drive back in the morning.”

“I can come and get you?” Sergei offered.

“At five am?”

“You could get a taxi,” he suggested, without missing a beat.

Cat laughed again. “I thought that would be too early for you.”

“My work is the kind that keeps me up at night. Though less, now, than it used to.”

“Why’s that?”

“Let me drive you home and I'll tell you.”

Cat narrowed her eyes, “Oh, clever. What if I'm not the curious type?”

“You are the curious type,” Sergei countered, standing up and tidying their dessert mess. “I am good at knowing what people want.”

“See? Mystery on mystery. You know how to tempt a girl.”

Sergei rattled his keys and pulled Cat to her feet. Boldly he leant close to her ear, “But you are not a girl, Koshka.” He felt her shiver in response and turned to kiss her cheek. “Come, I drive you home.”

Cat reluctantly pulled out of his grasp, fetching her bag and keys and, at the last moment, remembering to pull her apron off.

Once they were in the car he turned the seat warmer on for her. Cat hummed contentedly and half turned to watch him as he drove, head pillowed against the leather. “So why don’t you work as late as you used to?”

Sergei glanced over at her, wondering why he had teased her with such a mundane fact. “Kolya, he has a new girl. Spends every night with her that he can.”

“And before he had a girlfriend?”

“He owns some clubs, and a few restaurants. Night time was working time.” He caught Cat raising an eyebrow. “Ok, yes. Also fun time. But now he stays home with his girl and I don’t have to be out at night so much.”

“You don’t like clubs? Drinking? Food?”

“Drinking and food, of course,” he shrugged. “Clubs were never much fun for me, but I go where Kolya goes and Kolya goes to the clubs a lot. Well, went to them.”

“And his new girl doesn’t like clubs?”

“She -“ he caught himself before saying that Ellie wasn’t old enough to go to clubs, that she usually had school the next morning. “They like to be,” he made a motion with his hand and said meaningfully, “Together.”

Cat snorted with amusement.

“A lot,” he added and she got the giggles. Sergei started to blush, thankful for the cover of darkness. “I have never known him to like a girl so much. Kolya, he’s like a bird, all puffed up, looking beautiful, wanting many lady birds to follow him.”

“Like a peacock,” Cat suggested, “Showing off.”

“Yes, just like that. But now, all he wants to do is be with Ellie. I think, maybe, he in love with her.” He said the last quietly, with reverence.

“Does she love him?” Cat wondered.

“Maybe, yes. She,” he struggled for the right words, “She talks to him differently, like it not matter that he ... try to impress women. But she look at him and it is like she really see Kolya.”

“She sees through his performance, likes him for who he really is.”

Sergei paused, pulled the car over at the address Cat had given him and then turned off the lights. “He is a good man. Not many people think that, but she sees, even when he tries to be tough.”

“Then he’s very lucky, to have a woman who loves him for who he is.”

Sergei nodded, realising that he envied Kolya. He wanted someone to look at him like that, like it didn’t matter he had done bad things, horrible things. Like he was her sun.

Cat put her hand on his thigh and leaned close to kiss his cheek. “You deserve that, too,” she told him. “Thank you for driving me home.”

“You will be ok in the morning?” He asked, her kiss drawing him from his thoughts.

“Yes. I’ll get a taxi,” she grinned. “Unless you want to be back here in six and a half hours?” When she saw he was contemplating it, she touched his thigh again. “Don’t. I was joking.”

“Ok,” he said, relieved, and Cat got her keys ready before hopping out. When she paused before closing the door Sergei hurried to say, “I can call you after work. If you want me to.”

Cat smiled at him, the suddenness of it fierce and hot. “Yes, baby. I want you to call me.” She pushed the door shut and Sergei watched her walk up her front steps and then pause to wave good night.

He returned the wave and waited until the front door closed. Driving home, he decided that sharing the verhuny with Cat had been a very good investment.

 

* * *

 

Sergei woke to a photo of a mug of coffee held up to a dark window, city lights behind.

> _C: First of the day. Taxi on its way._

He changed for the gym, light footed as he ran down the stairs to the basement. When he returned and made up his shake, he took a picture and replied.

> _S: My first. You up to three coffees yet?_

She’d replied by the time he was out of the shower.

> _C: I wish. First wedding goes out in fifteen minutes, then I can have number three._
> 
> _S: I let you work. Have a good day._
> 
> _C: You too. Remember to call me, baby._

Baby.

If someone had called him that two weeks ago, he would have hated it, but the way Cat said it, warm and slow, like she could taste the word, taste him... Well, she could call him whatever she liked, as long as she said it just like that.

 

* * *

 

Outside the Plaza, Sergei waited for Ellie to arrive. He snapped a photo as she walked inside, her hand on the arm of an older woman who must be her grandmother. Behind her, Loren did the same with Paul.

He sent the picture to Kolya and then added a text.

> _S: Just arrived. Walking with grandmother, L and P behind._
> 
> _N: Thanks. Liam downstairs?_
> 
> _S: Yes. You need to teach that boy how to behave. Plaza people are not his people._
> 
> _N: He’s wearing the suit?_
> 
> _S: He look like a circus dog, walking around on his back feet._
> 
> _N: Shit. That kid._

Sergei could hear Kolya’s laugh in his head.

> _N: No sign of Maksim?_
> 
> _S: The silver Honda is here, but only one of his boys._
> 
> _N: Fuck, he’s persistent._

It needed no reply, well worn territory that it was between them both. Sergei looked again at the Honda. Either it was too cold, or Zhurov’s boy had given up smoking and was staying in the car tonight.

Nothing further came from Kolya and, once the flow of cars arriving for the gala had ceased, Sergei had little to do but keep watch on the silver sedan.

He linked the phone to the car’s hands free and dialled Cat.

“Hi baby,” she answered, voice warm and liquid, making his stomach do unexpected but pleasant things.

“Koshka,” he replied, drawing out the word, smiling as she laughed shyly. “How was your day?”

“Long. But I got home a few hours ago, had a good hot shower and now I'm just kicking back.” Her words were slow and soft, he could hear her weariness.

“Did I wake you?” He wondered.

“No. Well, not really. I had a glass of wine with dinner and I'm just lying on the couch, watching TV.”

Sergei liked that picture, liked the idea of watching her, relaxed and sleepy, laid out on his couch. Liked the idea of her toes tucked up against him, her ankles bare, smooth and warm to the touch. Liked it a lot, so much even ...

“Anything good to watch?” He asked, pulling his attention back to the street.

“Hard to tell with my eyes closed,” she joked and he gave a snort.

“Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I was waiting for a call.”

“Oh.” She meant his call. “I’m sorry, Koshka, I was working.”

“Don’t worry, I figured.” She yawned, quickly smothering it. “You still at work?”

“Yes.” He eyed the little shit in the silver Honda and found another reason to hate Zhurov. “Sounds like you’ll be long time asleep when I'm done.”

“Probably,” she agreed. “Working tomorrow?”

Sergei’s stomach twisted, knowing he was going to disappoint her. “Tomorrow and Monday.”

He mentally ran through the things Kolya had planned, Ellie’s schedule for the week and the errands he had to run for Sasha. There might be a chance for him to stop by, but he didn’t want to promise her anything.

“Damn. Still free to sweep my shop on Tuesday?”

“Still free.” Sergei searched for something to talk about, reluctant to give up their conversation. “Is there anywhere you want to go for dinner?”

“Hmm. There’s an Italian place around the corner from me that has heavenly desserts.”

Sergei leant forward, pulling up a map centred on her address, searching for the likely restaurant. “I think that Koshka likes sweet things.”

She must have been half asleep, or muddled by the wine and her long day, he thought later, but when she said it, it hit him as hard as a right hook out of nowhere.

“Sweet like you, baby.”

He froze, but his dick knew what it was hearing, rapidly filling up. He swore soundlessly, shifting in the seat to get comfortable again.

“Baby?” Cat asked and then, sounding more awake then she’d been for the whole call, “Sergei? Did I do it again?”

 _Holy Christ._ Cat actually wanted him. Wanted him to ... _Shit_.

“Koshka,” he stammered, realising his voice sounded off. “I just ...” he started to explain, then came to an abrupt stop. How did you tell a woman that? “I was thinking ... of you.” Damn if even saying it made him twitch.

“Ahhh,” she sighed, relaxing. “Sorry, baby. I shouldn’t tease while you’re working.”

She didn’t sound _that_ sorry, or like she was trying that hard not to tease.

“I think you _are_ teasing me, Koshka.”

“Mmmm,” she purred and his cock grew hard, tight and uncomfortably trapped in his underwear. “Maybe just a little.”

 _Sweet, holy Christ,_ he couldn’t think of anything but her on his couch, hand on her ankle, fingers sliding up pale skin, her flowered skirt rising with his touch, Cat squirming and purring for him, moaning as he touched her through her underwear, feeling her wetness, putting his face to her, breathing in her sweet, musky scent ...

“Koshka,” Sergei managed to say, the weight of his hand resting between his thighs. He _ached_ , ached with a need that he couldn’t remember feeling before. Then a burning flash of white light.

    

_The icy ground bit at his knees but he ignored the pain._

    

_”Please,” he begged, “Anything. Anything but her.”_

    

_”All women are whores, Sergei. You should thank me for the lesson”._

    

_Fingers pulled sharply at his hair, snapping his head back._

    

_”Say_ ‘Thank you’ _,” he demanded._

    

_“Thank you.” Sergei choked and coughed, vomit rising, burning his throat._

    

_Sasha, hands bound, pushed into the back of a car. The car driving away, snow crunching under the tires ..._

He gasped and forced the bile in his throat back down.

_He was ok. Sasha was safe. Sasha was safe. Sasha was ..._

“Sergei?” Cat was still on speaker with him. Gone was her purring tone, her sweet words like amber honey.

Sergei couldn’t remember what she had last said. “Cat.”

“Are you ok? Did something happen?”

“No, Koshka. Everything is ok.” Deep, quiet breaths, eyes back on the street. He was working, there was a job to do. “But I should get back to work. And you need to sleep.”

“Ok.” No _baby_ , no purr, no sweet, tempting words. “Stay safe, alright?”

Concern. Worry. For him.

“Everything is ok. Have good dreams.” He scrabbled around the car's interior, searching for a bottle of water, soda, alcohol - anything to clear the burn out of his throat.

“Text me, when you get home?”

“Yes, Koshka.” There was a bite in his tone. Taking a centering breath, Sergei willed his voice to soften. “You go sleep. Don’t worry about me.”

“Alright, baby. Good night.”

“Night,” he replied and watched the call disconnect.

Sergei found a bottle of water on the back floor and drank it all in one long, cleansing swallow. Back in his seat, Sergei realised that the long buried memory had washed away every trace of his arousal.

Perhaps it was a sign. There were only broken parts of him below the surface and Cat would find that out soon enough.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Baby?” She repeated and he blushed. “Cat likes you, Senya, likes my big brother. And what does my brother think of Cat?”
> 
> Sergei stirred more honey into his tea, refusing to meet her eyes, and sipped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Tags have updated. We’re getting close to knowing Sasha and Sergei’s real story and I thought this was a good time to update things. Please take care, cause I love you all and I want you to enjoy reading this fic. 
> 
> This chapter brings us close to the current events in BT, so future posting will be tied more closely to lovestuck’s schedule. The good news is that I like littler chapters (provided that you like little chapters) and she likes long ones, so there’ll probably be a couple of chapters of No Grief in between her big ones. 
> 
> And ... if you’re wondering about the Russian names, words or conventions, there’s a little explanation for you at the end of the chapter. 
> 
> Lastly, I have a tumblr! Come over and see me @CatTailsFloristNYC

#### Saturday Night

The Gala ended and Kolya took Ellie back to his loft leaving Sergei to run the crew for the rest of the night. Liam, changed back into something closer to his native skin, stayed at Trinity, swapping eyelines with the driver of the silver Honda. Sergei ignored Liam’s grumbling about the cold, thinking that Zhurov’s boy was probably saying the same to his boss.

Close to midnight, a call came in from Aura’s manager. There’d been a fistfight outside, a kid had fallen and his head had hit the gutter. Paramedics were attending and the cops were on their way. It had nothing to do with Aura, really, but it was good for public relations if the club cooperated.

He got there just after the police. Two members of Aura’s security had been helping the paramedics with the crowd by keeping friends of those involved separated. When the police took over the area finally cleared and Sergei hung around in the background until the emergency services left, a reminder to all involved whose business this actually was.

There was a momentary hope that would be it for the night when a call came that the contact for the 2 am handoff was late. ‘ _What should we do?_ ’ Like traffic and accidents and bad GPS directions didn’t make people late occasionally. Sergei was just about to tell them to give it ten when the other guy turned up.

“I’m not your Mama,” Sergei growled to himself as he tossed the phone on the passenger seat and started towards his apartment.

Sergei was almost home when he cursed, realising that he hadn’t eaten since before setting up outside the Plaza eight hours earlier. No need to check if his fridge was empty, all it ever chilled was supplements and powders. A bottle of vodka was the only thing in the freezer besides ice cubes.

Not much was open by his place at 2 am and he was forced to divert a couple of blocks out of his way to grab a plates worth of slices, lukewarm and greasy but easy to eat with one hand while he drove.

The return route took him past the end of Cat’s street and he steered the black Range Rover down it before he could even acknowledge the thought. Pausing outside Cat’s building, Sergei looked up to her second floor windows, content to find them dark. Still, he pulled away with regret, mind nibbling at the edges of his earlier fantasy and the golden warm purr of her voice in his ear.

 

* * *

   

#### Early Sunday Morning

> _S: Home. Very late night. All is fine._

Sergei kicked off his shoes as he hit send on the text. He was working his way out of his clothes and through the apartment when his phone buzzed with a notification. He paused in the act of unbelting his pants in case he needed to go back out again. 

> _C: Good. Sweet dreams, baby._

It was nearly 3 am and Cat had woken up enough to send a reply. Sergei sighed and finished stripping off, falling in to bed and trying to figure out _what the fuck_ was so wrong with him that he couldn’t just accept Cat’s interest.

A gorgeous woman had decided she wanted him and he could barely manage to be around her.

Beautiful Koshka, with her pale skin and hazel eyes. Freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks, _dotted on her neck, leading to more on her shoulders, the upper slopes of her breasts. Hair soft in his fingers, twisting until she arched for him, purring as his tongue tasted her, pulling her dusty nipple into his mouth, flicking at it with his tongue until she moaned and guided his head down. Finding tight curls as bright as the copper on her head, parting her with his nose, losing himself in her scent. That first delicious taste on his tongue, honey and spice, as his Koshka mewled for him and whispered_ baby, please _into the dark ..._

Sergei gasped as he jerked upright, the covers twisted between his legs, cock hard and heavy and wanting. He wrapped a hand around himself without coming fully awake and stumbled into the shower, flicking the mixer on and ignoring the icy water as it changed to steaming hot. His cock jerked in his fist, coming hard and quick, long ropes of cum that circled the drain.

The wall of the shower was cold and hard at his back when he leaned into it, his head hitting the tile with an audible thump. He wanted Cat to want him, wanted her to push him away. Selfish and selfless, his knowledge of who he was, who he could have been, warred inside his head.

Couldn’t Cat see that Sergei was nothing but an ugly and broken thing that somehow would hurt her in the end?

 

* * *

#### Sunday

If Sergei didn’t have to work first thing on a Sunday morning he ran the six blocks to Sasha’s apartment instead of going down to the basement gym. For him she would make breakfast and proper Russian tea and they would talk about her art or what they were reading or any other of a hundred topics that were suitable for discussion on a Sunday morning.

For Sasha he would get out of bed at any hour so, despite having had less than four hours sleep, by 7 am Sergei was up, dressed and running.

The sky was just beginning to lighten, the city quiet in that way that cold and snow has of dampening every sound. Even the salt trucks were barely audible as they moved through the streets. The repetitive motion of running, the rhythm of feet and breath and heartbeat settled Sergei into a mindless otherness.

He let himself into Sasha’s apartment block with his keypad pin and then ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. A coded knock on her door elicited an answering ‘ _Voyti!_ ’ and Sergei let himself in.

The apartment was a studio, in both senses of the word. Being on the top floor, the studio had tall ceilings and one wall was almost all windows, filling the room with light in the day time and a sparkling ethereal quality at night. The living space was simply divided into quarters. Under the windows one quarter was her workspace with drawing desk and a worktable. The other was a comfortable sitting area that adjoined the kitchen. The last corner was sheltered by the small bathroom, bed tucked into the corner, fabric hung from the ceiling in long swaths, creating the impression of an inverted bed canopy.

It was warm in Sasha's apartment, bordering on hot. The electricity bill that Sergei paid was probably higher than it should be but he didn’t care. He was simply happy that she could be however warm she wanted.

There wasn’t a way to know for sure, not unless Sasha told him, but Sergei suspected that one of the places she had been kept had been cold, maybe without electricity or in a basement or not properly shielded from the weather.

Sergei began stripping off his outer layers as soon as he locked the front door, eager to match the ambient temperature. Sasha stood barefoot at the stove wearing only summer pyjamas, her dark hair splaying out from her head in a messy crop cut. The heat and the familiar scent of nalysynky and smoky tea settled on him, marking out this time and space as their own.

Leaving his outer clothing on the couch, Sergei rounded the kitchen island and came to stand behind Sasha, peering over her to look at the food she was making. He kissed the crown of her head, squeezing her shoulders, “Privet Myshka.”

Sasha tilted her head back as far as she could and Sergei was relieved to see a smile on her lips. He kissed her forehead and then reached around her to snag one of the little parcels of crepe and cottage cheese. He shoved it in his mouth as she shrieked and swatted at him.

“Out, out! Thief!” Sasha pushed him out of the kitchen and towards the table. Sergei licked his fingers cheekily as he sat down, pouring tea for himself and Sasha. He watched her finish in the kitchen, his smile echoing hers as she began telling him about her drawing class from the day before. It had been weeks since she last ventured out of her apartment alone and Sergei was thankful for whatever had happened in the past week that was helping her to feel stronger.

It eased the churn of guilt about wanting Cat to be a part of this, of him.

Thoughts of Cat reminded him to check his phone for messages. Nothing, yet. Sergei sent her a photo of his cup of ruby red tea.

> _S: The Russian way to start the day._

Locking his phone again Sergei turned it face down, focusing back on Sasha.

She brought the nalysynky to the table and Sergei transferred some to his plate, squeezing lemon and drizzling honey over the crepe packages. He added a little of both to his tea and settled in to listen to the rest of Sasha’s news.

It was at least a half hour before his phone buzzed on the table and he reached to silence the message, but his eyes kept moving to glance at the back of the phone.

“At least look at it, Kolya might need you.”

Sergei hesitated. “It’s probably Cat.”

“Your florist friend? Sending you messages on a Sunday morning? Senya!” She teased using his pet name, reaching for the phone and snagging it away before he could stop her. Helplessly Sergei watched as she read the message out loud. 

> _C: Much better than a shake. Been to the gym, yet?_

“How does she know what you do in the morning, hmm?” Sasha wondered, eyes bright.

“Myshka,” he complained, reaching out to take the phone. “We chat a little, that’s all.”

Sasha held it away from him, putting in the code to unlock the rest of his messages, her other hand out to block his reach. Inwardly cringing, Sergei watched helplessly as she scrolled through the photos and messages.

“ _Baby_?” She repeated and he blushed. “Cat likes you, Senya, likes my big brother. And what does my brother think of Cat?”

Sergei stirred more honey into his tea, refusing to meet her eyes, and sipped.

“Ah, ah! He likes her too. Is this why he wants me to meet her?”

Sergei shrugged one shoulder, “You would like her shop, the flowers are... “

“Not the only pretty thing there, I think. Is there a picture of her in here?” Sasha finished scrolling their message history and sighed in disappointment. “I want a picture of the pretty lady Cat. Maybe I should ask for one.” Giggling, she began typing a message.

“Aleksandra,” he pleaded. “I am just getting to know her.”

Sasha peered up at him over the top of the phone, mouth curled wickedly as she finished and handed the phone back to him. She’d left the message open for him to read.

> _S: Sasha wants to see a picture of you. <3_

“Christ, Myshka. You sent a message with a heart?”

“I’m curious and it will help things along a little. You’re not that good with women, Senya. You need my help,” Sasha settled in to finish her breakfast, content with having stirred the pot a little.

Resigning himself to both her teasing and meddling, Sergei emptied his cup and worked at refilling it, trying to keep from looking anxiously at his phone. When it vibrated again, he lifted his eyes to Sasha who gave him an innocent little smile.

“You should see who that is.”

He drew it closer with his finger and tapped on the message.

> _C: Are you with Sasha? Say hello!_

Below it was a picture of Cat that must have been snapped on the street. Her hair was pulled back into a tight braid, a thick, chunky yarn headband covered her ears and forehead. She was wrapped in an overcoat of bottle green, leggings and boots just visible at the bottom of the picture.

Sergei couldn’t look away. Her usually pale skin was even whiter, freckles standing out boldly. Her lips were pink and slightly parted as she looked up into the camera with eyes coloured dark caramel and glinting with facets of green.

“I want to see,” Sasha interrupted his thoughts, holding out her hand.

“She says _hello_ ,” Sergei said, handing over the phone.

Sasha leant back in her chair, examining the woman in the photo, face sliding into serious thought, eyes taking in everything.

He thought it odd to be holding his breath in this moment, but he keenly wanted Sasha to approve, to make a comment, some remark that showed acceptance of the possibility that there might be another woman coming into his life.

“She has laughing eyes,” Sasha finally said, “And a kind mouth.”

Sergei waited, sensing that she wasn’t finished.

“She definitely likes you,” Sasha concluded, “Her cheeks are flushed.”

“They’re not,” Sergei disagreed, reaching to take the phone back, looking closely at the photo again. “She’s outside, it's cold.”

Sasha levelled a look at him that clearly communicated that he was full of shit. “ _Baby_ ,” she repeated.

Frowning, Sergei looked at the photo and text again and then locked his phone.

“Hey! Aren’t you going to say thank you for the picture? Tell her she is pretty?”

“Later,” Sergei grumbled. “Privately.”

“You should always tell a woman she is pretty, she will expect you to say something. Senya,” She chided, looking at him from under her dark lashes. “And you won’t even have to lie about it.”

Sergei growled in the back of his throat, making Sasha laugh, and opened his messages.

> _S: You are brighter than the sunshine, Koshka._

“What did you say?” Sasha asked as he locked the phone and stood.

“That my little sister is a very nosy Myshka.” He bent over to kiss her hair and then began layering up for the run home. “Thank you for breakfast, I need to be going.”

“Are you going to see her today?” Sasha asked, turning in her seat to watch him.

“No, I’m doing the rounds for Kolya. But I am taking her to dinner on Tuesday.”

“And then?” Sasha prompted, eagerly leaning closer.

“I will walk her home and go back to my apartment.” Pulling the hat down to cover the tips of his ears, Sergei tried to ignore where Sasha was going with this line of questioning.

“Aren’t you guys doing it, yet?”

Exactly what Sergei knew she would ask. He closed his eyes, letting his breathing even out, willing his voice to be calm and gentle. “Aleksandra, _that_ is none of your business.” Opening his eyes, Sergei attempted to stare her down, “Please don’t ask again.”

Sasha pouted, but remained quiet, swinging her foot against the floor in a gesture of restless energy that he had known since they were children.

“Talk to you tonight, Myshka,” he said tenderly. “Do you need anything?”

“Yes!” She jumped up and hurried to the large table under the windows, pushing papers around until she found a catalog from her favourite art supplies store. “I circled them.”

Sergei folded the thin flyer and tucked it in his jacket pocket. “Text me if there’s anything else.”

“Ok!” Sasha hooked one ankle around the other, wobbling a little as she looked up at him with eyes as deep and dark as the night.

Fondly, he stroked her hair. “I will see you Thursday. It’s Thanksgiving so we’ll just eat here. No therapy.”

“I remember,” she complained, wrinkling her nose. “See you on Thursday.”

Sergei unlocked the front door, reminded her to lock it again, and took the stairs at a run, settling into a comfortable rhythm once he reached the street.

His little mouse was in good spirits today. He felt a twinge of annoyance at her teasing, but the run settled his mind. Better that she be overly enthusiastic than angry with the idea of him and Cat.

 

* * *

#### Tuesday

Sergei cast a look back towards Kolya’s SUV as he crossed the street. Something had been making him uneasy all afternoon but he couldn’t quite put a name to what it was. There was no sign of the silver Honda, nor either of the men that typically drove it. Their absence after nearly two weeks of constant surveillance was concerning; he doubted that Zhurov had given up and packed off home.

Kolya’s arrival and the near end of Ellie’s shift was ratcheting up his anxiety instead of relieving it. Sergei paused outside Cattail’s, looking at the window display while he waited for Ellie to step out of the Roastery. Taking out his phone, making like he was taking a photo of the flowers in the window, he sent a message to Kolya. 

> _S: Keep your eyes open, something is not right._

> _N: Maybe they went home early for Thanksgiving._

Sergei raised his eyes in a mute appeal to God to spare him from Kolya’s sarcasm. It had returned this morning after they had endured two days of the sour look and heavy silence that Kolya used as cover when he was brooding over something. Shuffling his feet against the cold working its way into the soles of his shoes, Sergei gave both directions of the street another look.

Ellie finally stepped out of the Roastery’s interior letting out a burst of warm, coffee scented air. She huddled against the biting cold and Kolya began the slow crawl towards their sports field pick up point. Still concerned, Sergei followed behind her to the corner, watching Ellie make her way down the street, across the car park and on to Trinity’s grounds. 

> _S: E inside. Tell me when you see her coming out._

Stepping back into the dark doorway of another shop, Sergei watched the front of the campus until Kolya’s message came through. 

> _N: Eyes on El._

> _S: Good. Glad she is spending the night with you._

> _N: Thanks. Night._

Sergei worked on easing his shoulders as he walked back around to Cattail’s and knocked on the door. 7.10, he grimaced. He was late.

Cat’s smile was bright as she emerged from the back room and unlocked the door.

“I am sorry, Koshka. I finished work late.”

Cat put a hand on his shoulder and he bent down to kiss her cheek.

“Well, I'm all done. How about we just go?”

Sergei noticed that Cat was in her coat already, bag over her shoulder. “Okay,” he nodded, “You drive your car and I’ll follow?”

“I got a taxi this morning. It’s a quiet week and I didn’t have to go to the market today.”

That banished some of his anxiety. Cat watched his face relax and gave him a grin and a nudge towards the front door. “Yes, you get the pleasure of my company all the way to dinner.”

Once they were moving Cat unbuttoned her coat and leant back in the seat. Sergei focused on driving, remaining quiet.

“Do you do Thanksgiving?” She finally asked.

Sergei glanced her way, Cat’s face was turned towards him. “Not really. Sometimes I have to work. If not, I spend it with Sasha. We have dinner, talk, watch movie.”

“That's a lot like mine,” Cat remarked. “It’s just me and Aileen. When Sasha asked for a picture, the other day, I got the idea that...” Cat turned all the way towards him and went on, “Would you both like to have Thanksgiving at my place? It’ll be quiet, the only other person coming will be Aileen. We just have the usual things and,” she grinned, “Talk. Watch a movie.”

Her suggestion surprised him. He gave little thought to Thanksgiving other than the changes it meant in his weekly routine. Sasha and he were always welcome at the Cordova’s, but Thanksgiving was one of those occasions where their house was full of people and noise and Sasha found it overwhelming.

“I understand if it’s too much for Sasha.”

They were at a stop light and Sergei turned to look at Cat realising that he must have taken too long to answer.

“Or if it’s not something that you want to do,” she stammered in fits and starts.

Sergei reached and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, her skin soft and flushed from the warmth of the car. The light changed and he turned back to the street. “I will ask Sasha. If she says yes, then I would be very happy to have Thanksgiving with you.”

With an audible sigh, Cat relaxed back into the seat, brushing her hand over his forearm for a moment. “Is there anything Sasha likes, you like, that I should be sure to have?”

Sergei shook his head and then remembered, “No alcohol, please? Sasha had bad ... her medicine goes badly with drinking. But if there is some, she will drink anyway.” Keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead, he quietly added. “Is better if we don’t have fight in your house.”

Cat nodded, hand brushing his thigh. “Anything else we can do to make her comfortable?”

Indicator on, he turned the car into a parking spot a few doors down from Cat’s address. He turned off the lights, rubbing at his chin. “There is something that is a little strange.”

“What is it?”

“Balloons, fireworks,” he snapped his fingers, the sound startling in the quiet car. “Fast loud noises, they scare her. She, I think...” With a whoosh of breath Sergei shrugged, “I do not know for sure, but guns frighten her. So no movies, tv with shooting, if that is okay?”

“Okay,” Cat nodded, her forehead furrowed. “What is she sick with?”

Swallowing, Sergei ran his hand over the curve of the steering wheel. “Some very bad people ... hurt her. She,” he gestured at his body, “She is healed, now, but inside her head...” he pressed his lips together, breathing deeply to ease the strain in his chest, “She is still fighting them.”

“Is that why you came to New York?”

“Yes.”

Cat stroked her fingers along his thigh, her touch firm and supportive. “It’s alright if she can’t come and you want to spend Thanksgiving with her, I understand.”

Sergei touched Cat’s hand, letting his fingers rest between hers. “I would like you to meet. And the therapist says going out is good for her and usually that is true.”

Cat turned her hand over, curling her fingers into his. “I am honoured that you would think about trusting me to meet her, to bring her to my home.”

Squeezing her fingers, Sergei replied, “She will like you, Koshka, it just might be a while before she is ready to meet you. Sasha can be well in the morning, but later be crying and not even go out her door.”

“You are a good man, Sergei, a good brother.”

Sergei shrugged in response and let go of her hand. “We can walk to the restaurant?”

Understanding that the discussion about Sasha was over for now, Cat undid her seatbelt. “Yes, it’s not far at all.”

Cat picked up her bag as Sergei walked around the car to help her out and over the mound of dirty, half frozen snow in the gutter. There was a lot of pain that he was keeping from her, understandably so if she read between the lines of what he had just told her about Sasha. The kind of violence that men brought into the lives of women was universal.

Cat took his arm, again, tucking herself into the warmth of his bulk, and asked Sergei questions about growing up in Russia. He shared stories of the summers he and Sasha had spent at their grandparent’s farm, telling them in his slow and careful English. The deadpan manner that it gave to the things Sergei said made each story into a comedy and he basked in Cat’s laughter all through the meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translation and notes**
> 
>  
> 
> **Names**
> 
> Nicknames, or diminutives, are a thing in Russia. What someone might be called varies greatly depending on how well the speaker knows the person, whether they are related, are long term friends, colleagues, like or dislike the person and also where they come from. Someone could be called five different diminutives in one day and that would tell you something about them and each person that they met. 
> 
> Names spelled in Cyrillic (the Russian alphabet) look quite different and so when typed out how they sound or when spelled on official documents like birth certificates, there can be some variation in direct translation or an intentional choice to make the name sound more American.
> 
> Nicolas (American) = Nikolai, commonly shortened to Kolya. Being Russian, this is what Illyana, Sergei and Sasha prefer to call Nico. 
> 
> Sergei (Sir-gi) is a common Russian name with many diminutives. Sasha shortens (!?!) it to Senya, a nickname common in south-west Russia, where their family is from. 
> 
> Sasha is a common diminutive for Aleksandra, a popular Russian name. Sasha/Sascha also means dark, which fits Sasha’s complexion. 
> 
> Myshka is Russian for ‘little mouse’ and a common term of endearment. When she was young, Sasha was called Myshka and, for reasons we will discover, Sergei started using it again when they came to New York.
> 
> Catriona (Cat-tree-na) is an Irish version of Katherine, a first name with many variations around the world. In Russian, Ekaterina/Katerina has many diminutives including Kat and Katya. But Sergei went for the pet name and literal translation of Cat’s nickname and uses Koshka which is ‘cat’.
> 
> Kotenok is another common pet name and means ‘kitten’.
> 
>  
> 
> **Russian words**
> 
> Privet = Hi! A casual greeting between people who know each other
> 
> Voyti = Come in, enter, in here
> 
>  
> 
> **Russian Tea, Coffee and Food**
> 
> Russian Tea is served as a concentrated brew and then thinned with hot water and sweetened or flavoured with lemon, sugar, honey or jam. It’s not particularly popular with breakfast, but Sunday mornings are something of a little Russian oasis for Sergei and Sasha, so they enjoy it then.
> 
> Coffee in Russia is historically Turkish coffee, super finely ground roasted coffee beans boiled and then served directly, grounds and all, in small cups. Milk, sugar, honey and condensed milk are added to your preferred taste.
> 
> Nalynsky are crepes with a filling, folded or rolled. Sweet fillings might be cottage cheese and raisins, jam or stewed fruit. Savoury fillings are just as popular and might be ground meat, cabbage or stewed vegetables. Nalynsyky have much in common with other traditional crepe dishes from Europe.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What could you possibly want that I could give you?_
> 
>  
> 
> “Let me tell you a story to save you wondering whether you should lie to me.” Cat sipped her tea, looking at him over the top of the mug.

#### Tuesday

He walked Cat back to her apartment building and stood, watchful, as she got out her key. When Cat turned to him from the threshold, door open behind her, the light of the entry made her hair glow with amber, her cheeks and lips pink from the cold air. Enthralled, Sergei took her hand when she reached out to him, leading him up the stairs to her apartment.

In the fumbling moment that was Cat unlocking her apartment door, Sergei began to come to his senses. When she stepped inside he hesitated, a hand on the doorframe.

Cat rose up on tiptoes and pulled on the lapels of his coat drawing him down until she could press her lips to his. The kiss was slow and smooth, her lips chill, a sensation quickly chased away by her warm breath.

She stopped and pulled back just far enough to ask, “Come inside?”

Sergei gave a mute nod, and Cat walked backwards, drawing him with her, hands gripping his lapels as if he might bolt.

With her foot, she nudged the door closed and kissed him again, more insistent, this time, coaxing him with her lips. When his broad hands settled on her hips, Cat mmmed her encouragement and, finally, Sergei let her in.

He chased coffee and cream and cinnamon, her taste sweet and enticing and mixed with the dessert she had eaten while teasing him with eyes and lips and teeth. Sergei would bring Cat dessert every night if she would tease him like that and let him kiss her afterwards. His hands rose up the curve of her spine and she leaned back so he could better fit his mouth to hers, taking as much as she would let him.

They paused and Cat finished with little kisses pressed to his lips, reluctant to stop now that they had started. Sergei found she had one hand on the back of his neck, the other scraping through his close cut hair. His hands travelled her back, the deep green wool of her coat warm and slightly rough.

Cat shivered in his arms her eyes closing as she drew in a sharp breath.

“Okay?” Sergei asked, leaning back to look at her face.

“Yes,” she laughed softly, resting her forehead against his shoulder. “Wow, I don’t think a simple kiss has ever made me ...”

“What, Koshka?” He whispered.

“Want someone so much. Will you stay? Let me kiss you and want you more?”

“Whatever you need,” Sergei told her, unbuttoning her coat, eyes holding hers, sliding it from her shoulders, doing the same with his own while her hands stroked the nape of his neck and ran through his hair. His suit jacket followed and then he was walking Cat back to a bench in the kitchen, hands reaching for her thighs, sliding over leggings and under her skirt, lifting her up.

“Proper height for kissing,” he murmured, hands returning to sweep the curve of her back through her cardigan. Cat grunted and arched into his hands when Sergei took her mouth, rolling her body against him.

 

* * *

 

As much as Sergei had worried about what Cat wanted, every moment since he first saw her tonight had seemed to inevitably lead to this.

Cat purring under his hands as they stroked her, little moans rising from the back of her throat as he relentlessly chased the taste of her mouth.

Her legs wrapping around his thighs, pulling him closer and closer until he was pressed against her heat.

The length of him growing steadily firmer, erasing whatever arguments he had concocted to guard against dreams, against reality, against this.

With fumbling fingers, he found the hem of her cardigan, gathering it upwards as he stroked the silky warmth of her blouse, pulling that free until he was against her skin. Fingers brushed the waist of her skirt and worked their way upwards, taking blouse and cardigan with them until he could feel nothing but skin against his palms.

It had been so long since Sergei held a lover that he had forgotten the simple pleasure of skin on skin. He savoured the soft warmth of her body, filling his hands with her. He groaned into her mouth as Cat pressed her breasts against his chest.

Her fingers worked over his shirt buttons, baring his chest, learning the shape of him. Sergei put his mouth to her jaw, her neck, kissing and tasting, distracting her as he ran his tongue up to her ear and rumbled _Koshka_ into the skin just below it.

The whimper that leaked out of her had him biting at her flesh, nipping and licking his way back to her lips, pulling her tightly to him, fingers spread wide, digging in to her.

Deft fingers undid his belt, then the button of his pants and, before he knew what was happening, Cat was running her hand along his length. The responding throb of his cock made him gasp and he pulled back to find her eyes.

_And her face was another’s, pale cold skin, eyes wide, dark bruises under them, lips probably pinched to pinkness moments before. She had taken his hand and led him back to this tiny room, barely warm. Laughter had followed him, loud and coarse, voices making crude remarks in Russian._

“Sergei,” Cat’s voice piercing the memory, a hand cupping his cheek. “Baby, where did you go?”

_He didn’t even remember her name, just another of the frightened, wide eyed girls that one of Zhurov’s ‘clients’ filled his brothels with. She had put her hand on him, feeling his length, lips pursing to coo some enticement to him when he had seen her eyes go wide and the slight shake of her head as she realised how large he was and not even fully erect._

_“It’s ok,” he told her, “We don’t have to ...”_

_She was trembling, shuddering, with fear. “If I don’t make you happy, Olga will beat me.”_

_He shushed her, reaching to stroke her cheek. “She doesn’t need to know. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”_

_“But, I can do this,” she told him, and went to her knees, hands shaking, trying to open his pants._

_“No, I don’t want you to. Stop!” He raised his voice and she jerked back from him, tears already in her eyes, wide and terrified._

_“Please,” she sobbed, “I must. You will like it, I promise.”_

_Dark eyes, pale skin, greasy dark hair, tears on her cheeks and now it was Sasha kneeling in front of him, begging to suck on his cock._

_With a gasp of horror, stomach churning in revulsion, he turned. Yanking the door open he pushed through the crowd of men who called him brother, leaving behind the girl who looked like his sister, kneeling in a room stinking of sweat and sex and fear._

“Sergei?” A woman’s voice, firm, but far away. A doorknob in one hand, the other wrestling with the deadbolt, trying to ... open it? Lock it? In or out? Where was he going?

“Sergei,” the voice was closer, insistent, kind, familiar. “Sergei, tell me you see me.”

He turned slowly, hand still clutching the doorknob. He blinked and saw Cat, her top dishevelled, her expression soft and open.

“Cat.”

“You’re safe, baby. You’re in my apartment. Do you want to stay here? Or you can leave. Just tell me what you need.” She kept her eyes on him and moved slowly, reaching down to pick up his suit jacket and coat. “You can go,” Cat reassured him, “Just put on your coat. It’s cold out.”

Sergei brushed his fingers down his front and found that the chill against his skin was from the gape of his open shirt. Mechanically, he buttoned it closed, tucked the tails into his pants and before doing up his fly and belt.

Cat watched him, still and patient. “Do you want to go?”

He looked to the door and then back at her, disoriented.

“Come and sit down, I'll get you some water.” Cat stepped towards a couch, laying his coat and jacket over the back. “Sit down, baby,” she coaxed, fixing him with her gaze until he moved and sat down uneasily on the upholstered edge.

“I’m getting you some water. Wait here for me.”

Cat left, but he barely noticed, then she was back with two bottles of water, handing him one, and sitting down in the armchair across from him.

“Do you know where you are?” She asked him again.

“What happened?” He asked instead of answering.

“I think you had a white out,” Cat answered.

“What?” Sergei blinked, unscrewing the cap of the bottle.

“A flash back, a bad memory. There was a thing that made you remember something bad and you felt like it was happening again.”

Sergei shook his head and tipped the bottle back, swallowing half the contents. When he looked back at her, Cat was watching him, leaning forward, elbows on her knees.

“I don’t expect you to tell me but I will listen to whatever it is you have to say.”

He stood up quickly and she leant back, face turned up to him. He stared, searching her features for pity or judgement of who he was or ... whatever had just happened. There was none of that, only a willingness to meet his gaze, steady and calm.

Sergei walked around the couch, pulling on his jacket and coat. “Thank you,” he said, unable to look back anymore. “I will let you know if Sasha would like to accept your invitation.”

He heard Cat stand up as he walked towards the door, pausing to turn the deadbolt, fingers resting on the handle. Listened as she walked towards him then stopped.

“Good night,” she said. “Thank you for dinner.”

Sergei nodded, once, and then walked out of her apartment, alert for the snick of Cat’s door closing as he descended the stairs.

 

* * *

#### Wednesday

The next morning Cat sent him a text while he was down in the gym.

> _C: Morning baby._

A photo of a take out coffee in the cup holder of what must be her car.

He sent back a photo of his feet, running on the belt of the treadmill.

> _S: Good morning._

What else was there to say? I am broken. I will hurt you. You don’t want me. Tell me no and I will never think of you again.

Except that would be a lie.

Catriona, Cat, Koshka.

He continued to run, unable to make himself turn away.

 

* * *

#### Past midnight, Thanksgiving Thursday

Unable to turn away, unable to stay away.

He sent Cat a text as he left Elysium, tugging his tie off and throwing it on the passenger seat.

> _S: Can I see you?_

> _S: Please Koshka._

The lock on the outside door of her apartments was ridiculously easy to pick. He made a mental note to get it changed.

He climbed the stairs two at a time until he stood in front of her door.

> _S: I am knocking now._

Sergei counted down five slow breaths and was going to knock again when the deadbolt turned.

Cat blinked, a single light on in the room behind her, illuminating the hall. She looked Sergei over and then stepped back, let him enter and locked the door again.

“You want something to drink?” She asked as Sergei looked around her apartment, really seeing it for the first time.

“Water is fine.” The apartment was more shadows than objects, the single lamp shedding a yellow circle of light over the table and chairs adjacent to the kitchen.

“Tea?” Cat suggested.

“Okay.” It really didn’t matter what he drank, Sergei was here with questions, looking for answers.

_Do you know what I am?_

“Take off your coat,” Cat suggested through a yawn and shuffled into the kitchen, turning on the counter lights and then the kettle.

He laid his coat over the back of a dining chair and looked closer at the apartment. Last night Cat had consumed all of Sergei’s attention and then he had left in a daze.

_Do you know how dangerous I am?_

Even in the dim light he could have guessed this was her home. It was a mix of old and new, furnished in odd, unmatched pieces. Plants sat on every surface and hung from the walls and ceiling. Comfortable, used items everywhere. Neat, clean but also personal.

It was like wrapping himself in her.

_How that could hurt you?_

Cat’s home couldn’t have been a greater contrast to his own stark, minimalist apartment.

Sergei took off his jacket and began to roll up his sleeves. Cat was watching him, two mugs with teabags on the counter, waiting for the water to finish boiling. She’d answered the door in a robe and slippers, the apartment a little too chilly to be getting around in less.

_What happened last night?_

“I’m sorry for waking you,” Sergei said, approaching where she stood.

“Don’t worry about it. I often get up at 3 am and make tea.” She held her expression still for just long enough to have him worried and then she smiled. “It’s ok. I gather it was a rough day at work.”

He’d been at the club when she texted.

> _C: If you have a twin walking around, tell me, otherwise please let me know you’re ok._

> _S: I'm fine. At work. Will talk later._

“So you don’t have a twin,” Cat observed just as the kettle boiled and she lifted it to fill their mugs. She slid it towards him along the countertop, bringing her own and stopping with an arm’s distance between them. “You _are_ ok?”

Sergei shrugged a shoulder and when she continued to gaze at him he nodded. “How did you know?”

“Trinity’s got a small student body. Owen heard it from someone who heard it from someone and thought from the description that you might have been one of the men.”

Sergei nodded.

“The girl?”

“Ellie, Kolya’s girlfriend.”

“And the other guy?”

“Someone who wanted to hurt her.”

“Because of who your boss is?”

“Yes.”

Cat removed her teabag and dropped it in the sink. “Let’s sit down,” she told him and walked to the lounge, taking the armchair.

Sergei followed, the adrenaline of the night beginning to recede, leaving him feeling empty and tired. He sat down opposite her, putting his mug down on the side table, sitting on the edge of the couch.

_Why are you still talking to me?_

Cat gave him a wry smile when she realised they were sitting just as they had last night.

They sat in silence while Sergei tried to put the thoughts in his head in the right order.

_What could you possibly want that I could give you?_

“Let me tell you a story to save you wondering whether you should lie to me.” Cat sipped her tea, looking at him over the top of the mug.

Sergei blinked and pulled back, resting his palms on his knees. He wanted to say ‘no’, that he wouldn’t, but _Do you know what I am?_ repeated in his mind.

_A liar._

“I understand why you might, but it’s not necessary. So, just ... hear me out?” Cat asked.

“Alright. Tell me a story.” He had come straight to her door without ringing the bell, but Cat hadn’t asked how.

_A criminal._

“When I was sixteen, and Aileen was twelve, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Mam had never intended to tell us the truth about our life in Ireland, before New York, but I guess knowing that she was going to die changed her mind.”

“I’m sorry,” Sergei said quietly.

Cat acknowledged his condolences and continued. “My father wasn’t dead. He wasn’t an innocent bystander of a Unionist shooting. He was a member of the IRA.” Pausing, she asked Sergei, “You know who the IRA is? Why they were fighting?”

_A gunman._

“Independence,” Sergei answered. He was a child of a country that had remade itself in 80’s and 90’s. He knew what upheaval that caused, what cracks it created in the systems that were supposed to represent the common people and how those systems failed them. “An end to violence and hunger and poverty.”

_A killer._

Briefly, Cat paused in her retelling and considered Sergei.

“Russians know these things, too,” he told her, leaving aside that he knew them personally: cold, fear, despair.

“Of course.” Raising the mug to her lips, Cat tipped it back and, empty, rolled it between her hands.

“My father was a hitman and a bomb maker. Most of the time men like my Da were killed - by the Unionists, the police, the army. Sometimes the IRA, if they thought they’d been betrayed. When my mother found out he’d been arrested, she left Ireland and brought us here. Once his identity became public knowledge we wouldn’t have been safe.”

_A liability._

Sergei found himself leaning forward, something in his past finding echoes in her own. “And she told you he was dead, to protect you.”

“And because she didn’t want him to be a part of her life anymore.” Cat shrugged, but Sergei could hear the emotions in her rising to the surface, her voice taking on a lilting accent that must have been all she knew for the first six years of her life.

“Ma told me I no longer had a father, a father that I remembered giving me baths and reading me stories and putting me to bed. She killed him, and I'm not sure that I forgive her for it.”

“I understand that he was dangerous, that she was scared, that she believed she was protecting us. But for ten years I thought my father was dead and Aileen doesn’t even remember him, because Ma didn’t want her to.” Cat rubbed her hand over her mouth, turning to look out the dark windows.

The quiet seeped back into the room and Sergei thought about a mother that he only knew through the photos beside his father’s bed and stories his grandmother had told told on hot summer nights to a pair of dark haired siblings. Dead parents, even when you didn’t remember them, left a hole in the landscape of childhood.

_A son._

Cat sniffed and then spoke. “So when my mother died, I went to Britain to find him.”

“What did you find?” Sergei asked. His fingers worked the band of his watch, instinct calling him to Cat, making him want to soothe her, quiet the words that brought her pain.

“He’s in prison, for life. He was convicted of making a bomb that killed nine British Soldiers at military checkpoint. I... “ her voice trembled, then she swallowed. “I wish he hadn’t done it, of course I do, but ... he’s still my Da. My mother - she didn’t let me choose. And she should have. Maybe it didn’t matter to Aileen, but it mattered to me.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Sergei stood and moved to Cat’s side, sliding an arm under her knees and picking her up, resettling them both on the couch. Cat curled around him, a hand on his neck, cheek resting just above his heart. Kicking her slippers off, she tucked her toes between his thigh and the upholstered arm of the chair. Sergei found the corner of her robe and tugged on it until it covered her ankles.

Cat took up more room in his lap than Sasha. Weighed more, too, a pleasant wholeness that felt right in his arms, unlike the bony frailty of his dark haired sibling, always reminding Sergei of his debt to her.

_A brother._

With one broad hand Sergei supported her back, the other slowly stroked Cat’s thigh, firm and grounding. Eyes closed, he breathed in the scent of her hair, sinking in to it, letting what she offered him with words and body become a part of him.

 _Like called to like_ , the aphorism came to him. Perhaps that was what Cat needed from him, someone who knew, who understood.

The silence stretched so long that Sergei wondered if Cat had fallen asleep. He flexed his arm, trying to shift them both into a more comfortable position but the movement brought Cat back to life. She sat up, bracing one hand against his shoulder.

“I know the kinds of things you do when you go to work. I know what you have to be.”

Sergei took a breath to protest but her finger on his lips dissolved the last of his anxiety.

“Just don’t lie to me. You don’t need to protect me, you don’t need to pretend to be someone else.” Her eyes were fiery, a blaze held in check, a girl who had lost and found her father and loved him because of who he was, in spite of everything wrong that he had done.

“Alright, Koshka,” Sergei agreed, fingers twisting through her hair and making it jump with embers and sparks. “There are some things that I can’t tell you, but I won’t lie.”

The wild thing in her regarded him and Sergei felt called to that, too. A feral, hungry thing that wanted him. Then Cat blinked and the intensity in her eyes receded.

“Okay.” She let out a long breath and curled back into him, her fingers brushing over his chest. “Tell me about your day.”

 

* * *

 

The events of Sergei’s day came out in pieces. Shopping for Sasha. Reviewing the security around Trinity. Waiting for El to start her shift. Zhurov’s appearance, the threats to Ellie, the confrontation.

When Sergei told Cat about the pale and shocked girl he’d put in the front seat of his SUV, she felt the tremble through his chest. She laid her hand on his neck, fingers barely making a third of the circumference, but still weighty against his skin.

“She’s safe, baby. You did good.” Her thumb stroked the tense cord of his throat feeling his pulse quicken and then the muscles working as he tried to swallow the fluttering beat down.

“I gave her to Kolya. Then I called Sasha and you sent me the message.”

There was more there, words he couldn’t say.

“Sasha’s safe. I’m safe.” Cat shifted back to sitting so she could look at Sergei’s face. “This Zhurov guy, he ...” she was going to say _scares you_ but then she thought better of it, “He’s dangerous?”

“Very,” Sergei replied. “A monster, a demon.”

Cat watched him go distant, thoughts beginning to spiral. “I’m here, baby. Look at me. _Look at me_ ,” she repeated, words clipped and firm. When his eyes met hers they were dark: deep, haunted and far away. She dug her fingers into the flesh of his neck; it was like trying to grip a lamp post. “Stay here. _You_ are safe, I've got you.”

One blink, then a second. Cat was learning the little variations in expression; the shape of Sergei’s eyes, the tightening of his lips, where he focused. Finally, his attention shifted to her.

“ _I’ve_ got you,” she growled. “You’re here. _With me_.”

If Cat hadn’t been in his lap, her fingers cupping his neck, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the change, but there was an easing in the tense of his muscles, his eyes saw her, truly saw her, for the first time in minutes. Her grip eased, fingers sliding up into the short, sharp hairs at the nape of Sergei’s neck.

“Hey baby,” she smiled, caressing his scalp with the blunt of her fingertips. She urged his forehead down, meaning to press it to hers, but Sergei kept moving, pushing his face into her neck, his arms tightening around her, pushing the air out of her lungs with a single squeeze.

“You need better security, downstairs and here. Doors and windows, monitored.” He spoke the words against her skin and, if he hadn’t been so solemn, Cat would have found it arousing to be held so tightly, so close. In the furtherest reaches of her thoughts, she filed the feeling away for later consideration. Long, languorous consideration.

Cat repeated the stroke of her fingers in his hair. “Ok. But it’s Thanksgiving so we’ll have to put it off until Friday.”

His reply was a grumbling complaint into her neck that stirred up the want Cat had put away last night.

“If you need to, you can stay here, keep me safe,” she suggested.

He mumbled into her again and it took a moment for Cat’s brain to decipher the words. “What time?” Sergei was asking.

“It’s 4.30. In the morning,” she added, another attempt to lighten the load he was carrying. “You can’t drive home, not this tired. Stay here.”

Sergei sighed heavily and straightened. “I can sleep here.”

“Good,” Cat said, relieved. “Come on, then.”

She got to her feet, yawning and watched as he toed off his shoes, swinging to put his legs up on the couch. Sergei’s feet almost touched the other upholstered arm, would have if he flexed them.

She understood that he meant to sleep right where he was. “No. My bed. You need some decent sleep, you’ve got to get Sasha later. And you look ridiculous on this couch.”

Sergei started to protest, scowling.

“Nuh-ah. You might be a gorgeous hunk of Russian manhood, but I think I can resist ravishing you for a couple of hours. Come on,” Cat said, ending the argument by gathering up their tea mugs and walking away. She flicked the kitchen light off and called, “Bed!” as she headed to her room.

In the doorway, Cat paused, looking back and smiling as the big man pushed himself up from the couch and tentatively followed. By the time Sergei had stopped to look into her room, Cat had her robe off and was sitting on the bed in her nightshirt, putting her legs under the covers.

“Bathroom,” she said, pointing at another doorway. “Your side,” and she pointed at the empty half of the king size bed. “Wear whatever you’re comfortable in.”

Sergei looked between the bed and the bathroom. If he hadn’t been so exhausted, Cat thought that he might have pushed back more, tried to go back to the couch. But he ran a hand though his hair and walked to the bathroom, resigned to his fate.

Wriggling down under the covers, Cat switched off the main light, leaving the reading lamp to illuminate the pillows. When Sergei re-emerged, Cat had her eyes closed, saving him the awkwardness of being watched.

The bed sank down under his weight and she peeked. He’d chosen to leave his boxers and undershirt on. Cat kept to herself that she found the sight of his back outlined under the fabric just as sexy as the idea of him naked and closed her eyes again.

There was no more movement on his side for a while and Cat finally murmured into her pillow, “Get under the covers. Your frozen body will be too heavy for me to carry down to the dumpster.”

Sergei scoffed and she smiled as he shifted, letting in a cool rush of air when he raised the covers and tentatively lay down. Cat reached up and turned off the light.

Cat fell asleep first, but rolled over as the sky brightened, woken by the momentary surprise of another body in her bed. When she remembered who was there, she wriggled over and curled up against Sergei’s back, tucking her face into the hollow between his shoulder blades, hungrily dragging his scent into her lungs.

Sergei tensed and then breathed slowly out.

“This ok?” Cat asked.

“ _Da, Koshka_ ,” he replied and reached back, finding where her shins were pressed into the back of his thighs, cupping her calf, running his hand firmly over the muscular curve. “ _Spat’,_ ” he urged, removing his hand.

It took a while for the beat of Cat’s heart to settle, but eventually the slow rhythm of Sergei’s breathing lulled her. When she woke later Sergei was finally asleep, his hand hooked around the back of her knee, holding her close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Russian Translation**
> 
> Da - yes  
> Spat’ - sleep


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He’s the mob, Cat.” Aileen took the pie dish from the drainer, drying it. “All that muscle - what else would he use it for?”
> 
> Cat rinsed the baking pan and let the drips fall back in the sink. “I’m not stupid, of course he’s the mob. Or something.”
> 
> “Sweet Jesus. You know that and you brought him home? Mam would have a blue fit if she were alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you for the lovely comments and kudos and sharing. You’re welcome to chat with me in the comments or message me on Tumblr - @cattailsfloristNYC
> 
> And, as always, thanks to @lovestuck/@sweetandsure who shares this world and Sergei so willingly with me. <3

#### Thanksgiving

Waking was a slow cumulation of the senses. Bright light, the scent of sweet baking, distant sounds of activity, the touch of unfamiliar sheets, the warmth gone from the small of his back.

Cat’s warmth, Sergei recalled, rolling to glance across the bed, relieved and disappointed to find her side empty. Despite his exhaustion, sleep had been elusive, the churn of Zhurov, Ellie, Sasha never ending. 

Then her warmth against him, soothing, the press of her curled body provoking a different cycle of thoughts, more pleasant ones. Finally, he’d let himself touch her and with that simple grounding, Sergei had found sleep.

It was a rare luxury to lie in bed until he was fully awake. Above him, a tropical mural of flowers leaves began halfway across the ceiling. If he arched his neck, Sergei could see where it continued down the wall until it met the white iron of the bed head. 

Plants filled the window, sitting on the sill and hanging from the ceiling. Like the rest of the apartment, the bedroom felt like Cat, full of her but not cluttered. Briefly, he contemplated watching her sleep in this bed, wishing that he had woken before she did and had the leisure to wake her slowly, make her come to life with his touch...

Cat had moved his watch to the nightstand and Sergei slipped it on as he stood, working around the half hard cock in his boxers as he dressed in his suit pants and shirt from the day before. The erection subsided as he washed his face and rubbed toothpaste over his teeth with a finger. The stubble and a proper wash would have to wait, he’d have to go home to change, anyway. 

A loud clatter of dishes made Sergei check the time. Past midday. Cat must have been up for a while and he’d slept through the morning, oblivious to everything. The thought left him a little guilty: he should have been more aware, just in case Zhurov tried something. He should have been helping Cat prepare for Thanksgiving.

Pulling the bedroom door open, the scent of baking intensified, sweet and spicy. Barefoot, he made his way to the kitchen, pulling out a stool to sit at the end of the bench where Cat was standing in leggings, a simple dress and cardigan and fluffy sheepskin boots. 

The scrape of the stool drew her attention and her face lit up with a smile of sheer delight. Wiping her hands, she moved over to stand in front of him, leaning over his knees, resting her hands on his thighs and stretching up to kiss him on the lips.

“Morning baby,” she said, kissing him lightly again.

Sergei spread his knees, reaching for her sides, letting Cat in to stand against him. This time he initiated the kiss, pulling her body into his, making it into a slow awakening until they both were squirming. 

“Is afternoon,” he told Cat, kissing along her cheekbone until he nuzzled at her ear and neck, holding her close with his lips resting in the hollow of her shoulder. 

“You slept a long time,” Cat observed. 

“Thank you,” he told her, turning his face to put his lips to her neck. “I would not have, if I had gone home.”

“I’m glad. You feel better?”

He nodded and held her tighter, pleased with the purr she made and the way she pushed her body into his in response. He hadn’t meant to, but he found himself sucking softly on her neck, mouthing her skin, rising to her ear and taking the lobe between his lips. 

Cat’s whimper of arousal moved his hands to her behind, so he could pull her hips into his, nipping at her jaw then soothing with soft kisses. The trail brought him back to her mouth and his tongue was insistent. Cat's fingers scraped at his scalp as she sought to get even closer.

He groaned as he broke away, nose tucked into her neck again. “Sweet Koshka. I want to ...”

“What, baby?” She asked, breathing hard. 

Sergei spread his hands wide, fingertips pressing in to the sweet rounds of her behind, just brushing the place where her legs met. “Make you beg.”

Cat whimpered, shifting against the tantalising pressure and he reached further, forcing her legs to part as he stroked the seam of her through her leggings.

“Do you want my fingers? My mouth?”

A shiver ran through her and Sergei lifted Cat in his grip, forcing her to tip toes, pressing the hardness of his erection into her stomach.

“Baby,” Cat moaned, turning her head, searching for his lips, finding them as ringing filled the kitchen. 

Cat sighed, resting her forehead against his cheek, Sergei let her settle back on her feet, his hands sliding to her waist, thumbs stroking her sides. 

“Bad timing,” he said wryly. 

“Very bad,” Cat agreed, letting the buzzer go on while she caught her breath. “Probably not enough time, anyway.”

“Hmm?” He asked, kissing her neck and then pulling back.

“It’s almost 1. Aileen is coming over to help with setting up and I'm guessing you want to go home and change before picking up Sasha.” Cat reluctantly stepped away, crossing to the oven and opening it to pull out a pumpkin pie and a tray of little cornbreads. 

Sergei rubbed at his hair, trying to shift mental gears from arousal to functional. “Do you want me to stay and meet Aileen?”

Spreading butter over the cornbreads, Cat grinned at him, “Won’t it be better to meet her when you get here with Sasha? Then you won’t be outnumbered.”

“What you think is best,” he replied with a casual shrug. 

Cat wandered back to him, rising up to peck him on the lips. “Go home, shower, shave, pack a bag for tonight and come back here looking so hot that Aileen will be mad with jealousy.”

Sergei kissed her lightly again. “Suit?” He asked with amusement.

“You got some tight jeans?” Cat speculated, stepping back far enough to run her eyes over him.

“Suit or pants for gym.”

Cat narrowed her eyes, “You seriously don’t own a pair of jeans? What do you wear around the house?”

“I go to gym or I sleep,” he replied, like that’s what everyone else did at home. 

Cat slapped his thigh playfully and stepped back, shaking her head. “I’m not sure that I can deal with picturing you in a suit _all the time_.”

Sergei understood her meaning and a cocky smile shaped his lips. 

Cat rolled her eyes. “Suit for dinner, bring the track pants for later.” She considered him one more time. “Don’t bother with a tie.”

Her measured appraisal, the casual, undisguised want for him filled a place inside Sergei that had long lacked any attention. He reached for her wrist and pulled her between his knees again trying to put the words he couldn’t find into a long, languid kiss. 

Cat twined her arms around his neck, hands digging in to his hair and let him kiss her breathless. She pulled back, heart racing and rubbed her nose with his. “I love your kisses, baby.”

That was the final straw, her honeyed words had Sergei straining in his pants. “I go now, or I never leave.” He brushed his lips over hers and eased to his feet as Cat stepped back, as unwilling to let go as he was. 

“Still 3 pm?” Sergei asked.

“Mhmm,” Cat nodded. “I hope Sasha can make it.”

Sergei slid into his jacket and coat. “I do, too.” He stepped back towards Cat, cupping her neck and kissing her forehead. “Koshka,” he rumbled and she jokingly pushed him away. 

“Go, before I lose control.”

He smiled his cocky smile again and Cat rolled her eyes. 

Sergei couldn’t remember making it to the sidewalk, but the cold, crisp air brought him back to his senses and he scanned the street on the way to his car, keeping an eye out for anyone tailing him on the way to his apartment. 

* * *

Sasha was ready and waiting for him, a relief given all the worry he’d had over whether he was pushing her too hard, too fast. 

“You cooked?” Sergei asked when he shouldered Sasha’s bag and she picked up a dish from the counter. “What did you make?”

“Varenyky,” Sasha replied, “And no, you can’t have any now.”

Sergei groaned and held the door open for his sister. “Can I smell bacon?”

“Da,” Sasha replied lightly, pushing the button for the lift.

“Just one?” He begged, his stomach reminding him that he hadn’t eaten today. 

“ _Nyet_ ,” she told him curtly, but looked delighted by his pleading.

And from there it went off smoothly, better than Sergei could have hoped. 

Cat was delighted to meet Sasha and made a huge deal about how bacon and potatoes were the food of the gods. Something to do with her Irish heritage, she claimed.

Aileen gushed over Sasha’s makeup and within ten minutes they were sitting on the couch, sharing their favourite YouTube channels. Sergei hovered in the background until Sasha gave him a pointed look and suggested that perhaps Cat needed help in the kitchen.

Help with what, Sasha didn’t suggest, but he tried to stay out of the way, scrunched into the far corner of the counter trying not to think too deeply about how Cat’s ass had felt in his hands or the noise she made when he squeezed it. 

Cat finally took pity and came to lean beside him on the counter. “All ok?” She asked, tilting her head towards the living room where Sasha and Aileen were still talking cosmetics.

Sergei nodded, brushing a loose lock of hair from Cat’s neck with a fingertip. “Is a very good day, for her. Does Aileen really like makeup stuff?” Fashion, cosmetics and YouTube were all out of his normal areas of interest. 

Shifting a little closer, so that her hip pressed into Sergei’s thigh, Cat nodded. “Oh, she loves all that stuff, she’s not just being polite. Aileen’s a seamstress for the New York Ballet.”

“She dances?” Sergei wondered, not familiar with the word.

Cat chuckled softly, “No, she sews, makes the clothes that the dancers wear. Both of us were arty, growing up. I went into flowers and Aileen into costumes.”

“Ah,” he replied. “Sasha always want to be an artist. She would collect plants and draw them very carefully, like something for a school book.”

“What does she draw now?” Cat asked.

“Pictures for comics. She likes Japanese style, called manga.”

“I know what that is. Does she get any paid work?”

“No.” Sergei turned his face toward the lounge, listening to Sasha and Aileen talk over a video that was playing on her iPad. “It would be hard for her to keep a job. She can be unwell for weeks.”

Cat leant her head against his shoulder. “Does it make her happy?”

“Most of the time, yes. Sometimes she can be very upset with herself, think that she cannot be good at it.” 

Cat nodded her understanding. They stood together, watching the timer on the oven count down. 

Quietly, Sergei spoke. “What happened yesterday, the man who scared Ellie, can you not talk about it to Sasha?”

“Alright. Is it...” Cat trailed off. “It would scare her?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Cat rose up and kissed Sergei on the cheek. “Can you help put the food on the table?”

Getting the table ready let Sergei check on Sasha without appearing to hover. He felt a wave of gratitude for Cat and the way she could tell what was on his mind. 

* * *

“He’s the mob, Cat.” Aileen took the pie dish from the drainer, drying it. “All that muscle - what else would he use it for?”

Cat rinsed the baking pan and let the drips fall back in the sink. “I’m not stupid, of course he’s the mob. Or something.”

“Sweet Jesus. You know that and you brought him home? Mam would have a blue fit if she were alive.”

Turning, Cat glared at her sister, “Glass houses, Leeni. Who’s our father, again?”

“Well, she should know, then, ey?”

Cat scoffed, setting the baking pan down. “Of course he’s from that world. He’s a good man, though. That’s what matters. Look at how he takes care of Sasha.”

“Hmm,” Aileen’s reply was non-committal. They continued the washing up in silence until Aileen couldn’t bear it any longer. “Is he a good lay? He looks ... huge.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, is that all you can think about?” Cat cursed her pale skin, knowing the rising flush she felt would be obvious to her sister. 

“It’s all _you_ can think about. I thought you were going to eat him for dinner,” Aileen teased. 

Cat smiled to herself, feeling flushed for a different reason. “I don’t know. Yet.”

Aileen giggled, “Wow. You’ve got it bad for the Russian giant. Is he _coming_ tonight?”

“Fuck, Leeni,” Cat started laughing. “You have no shame.”

“Nope,” Aileen agreed cheerfully. “He’s so your type. I knew why you wanted him the second he walked in the door.”

“He’s _nice_ ,” Cat protested. “I’ve practically had to initiate everything, he’s such a gentleman. They don’t make American men like that.”

“Mmm. I don’t think they even make dildos like that.”

Cat shrieked and grabbed a tea towel, twirling it until she could flick her sibling with it. “That’s it! You’re just asking for it, now.”

“You’re definitely asking for it,” Aileen laughed, trying to back away and flick Cat at the same time. “All of it.”

“Oh, god,” Cat panted a few minutes later, once a tentative truce had been established. “I really like him.”

Aileen watched Cat twist the tea towel into a knot. “What if he ends up like Da?”

“Da was ratted out. Sergei’s ... careful. Like, I've never seen a gun, but I know he carries when he’s working. He doesn’t posture, or mouth off. Yeah, he looks like the mob or something, but...”

“But?” Aileen asked.

“He’s gentle, and kind. Sasha - I don’t know the full story - but she was gang raped, or assaulted, and he dotes on her. She’s all he has, like you and me. Brought her to New York to get away from her past.” Cat looked at her sister, appealing to her, “I’ve had a little taste of that and I want more. A lot more.”

Aileen pressed her lips together, arms crossed as she considered Cat. “Mam would tell you not to go near him, not for anything.”

“I know,” Cat conceded, truly troubled by the thought, despite disagreeing with her mother’s treatment of her father. 

“But the world’s not black and white,” Aileen shrugged. “If you think there’s more to him than money and drugs and guns, well...”

“There is,” Cat said, certain, “A lot more.”

“Just don’t get your heart broken, yeah?” Aileen said, reaching out to hug her. 

“Might be too late for that,” Cat said, returning the affection. 

“At least fuck him before you go head over heels. What if he’s shite in bed?”

Cat shrugged. “I can teach him. There’s good material to work with.”

* * *

The lock clicked and Sergei opened the door, an overnight bag on his shoulder. Cat looked over the back of the couch and smiled, stretching from her position curled up at one end. 

“How’s Sasha?” She asked, slipping a bookmark into the paperback she was reading and taking off her glasses. 

Sergei put Cat’s keys down in the middle of the table, shrugging out of his coat. “Exhausted. She dozed in the car.” Hanging his jacket on the back of a dining chair, leant on it and smiled. “But I think it went well. She loves your apartment, likes you, likes Aileen.”

“I’m glad,” Cat responded. “Aileen helped me clean up.”

“How did she like it?” Sergei walked over to stand behind the couch, looking down at Cat. 

“Oh, I think she’s on to you, got you all worked out.”

“Worked out what?” Sergei wondered. 

“Oh, that you’re dark and mysterious and gorgeous,” Cat grinned, stretching out her legs, her feet bare. “She thinks you’d look even better in jeans, of course.”

Sergei snorted. “Does she know?” Sergei’s eyes travelled to Cat’s feet, watching as she wriggled and flexed her toes.

“Know what?” Cat wondered, pulling her knees up, making room for Sergei. “Come sit?”

He walked around the couch and sat in the cleared space, Cat pushed her feet up against him, curling them around his thigh. Sergei’s hand automatically found her ankle, stroking up to her toes and back. 

“What I do. About Sasha.”

“What you do, yeah, she suspects. But with Sasha - I barely know what happened to her.” Cat curled her toes into his leg, caressing. “Why does she live alone? And not with you?”

Sergei stilled, hand cupped over Cat’s foot. “She isn’t alone, not completely alone. There’s a couple who manage her apartments and they - all the other people living there - they need some help. Someone to check on them, help them for emergencies or to do things. Shopping, medicine, going to appointments.”

“I pay her bills, take her most places, but Sasha has her own space and she can do the things she likes.”

Cat leant forward, “I didn’t realise that she needed that much help. Why not live with you, then?”

Sergei examined Cat’s foot, tracing the lines of tendons and veins with a finger. “Living with me - she wasn’t getting better. My hours are not stable. And sometimes, I come home and she sees...”

Cat struggled to work out what it was that Sasha would see in this giant of a man who was so soft and dedicated to her. Then she remembered. “Guns scare her.”

He took a deep breath and nodded, his shoulders sagging as he let it out. “I am careful, everything locked up, but even the smell: oil, the, the,” he rubbed his fingers together and sniffed them, trying to convey his meaning.

“Residue?” Cat suggested. 

“Da. Oil and residue, she smells it. Reminds her of the bad men.” 

It hurt him, she could see, that Sasha couldn’t differentiate between those who had hurt her and her brother. 

“Therapy doctor suggest that she feel better with regular times. That better for Sasha to see me when I am not reminding her of bad memories. Kolya and I found the apartments and, therapist was correct. She did get much better.”

Cat wriggled closer, bending her knees. “Her therapist sees her to help with the bad memories? The trauma?”

“Yes,” Sergei turned to look at Cat. “She - when we first found her, she couldn’t do anything. Not look after herself, shower, take medicine. Eat - she would barely eat. She couldn’t sleep. She, I...” he stumbled. 

“She would curl up on the couch like a little mouse - Myshka - and I would sit here and hold her feet, like this,” Sergei cupped his hand over Cat’s ankle. “For months, many months. A man therapist would come to see her and she would scream and hide. She was thinking a man coming to see her meant... sex. Rape.”

“Even Kolya she was afraid of. And Kolya, he find her, we take her, get her away. But she was frightened of him.” Sergei’s accent became thicker as he became lost in memories. He licked his lips, Cat resting quietly, waiting for him to speak. “Men were bad. Always hurting her. Even me, she was scared of, but she remembered being a little girl, my little sister. It was how she could trust me again.”

Cat reached around her folded knees, placing her hands over Sergei’s. “This guy from yesterday, Zhukov?”

“Zhurov.”

“Zhurov. Is he one of the ones that hurt her? Is that why you didn’t want her to hear about it?”

Sergei’s jaw worked back and forth, his hand tightening into a fist under Cat’s fingers. “I worked for him. When I was twenty-two, I want to leave, I don’t like the things he had me do. He came, took Sasha. Sold her,” he swallowed, Cat was motionless as she watched. “Three years I couldn’t find her. I come to New York and ask Kolya to help me. He found her in Atlanta.”

“How long did it take for Kolya to find her?” Cat’s whispered. 

“We look, get close twice. Last time we get her. Took four years.”

“Jesus, Mary and all the saints,” Cat swore. “Seven years? Sergei, that was the girl sitting at my table tonight?” Seven years of slavery. Of rape and captivity and... probably much worse. “That she’s still a person, someone. That’s incredible. How long since you found her?”

“Seven years also.”

Cat stroked his hand, easing her fingers into his fist, making it uncurl with methodical patience. “I can see why you think so much of Kolya.”

“Da,” Sergei agreed. “I am his man.” He said it with a spark of pride, “I give my life for him.”

That was a lot. A lot of pain eased with a great amount of the fierce loyalty that seemed to be all Sergei was made of. Kolya - serve, Sasha - protect. 

Cat had a moment of doubt. Did Sergei have enough left over for her? For love or lust or whatever it was that was sparking between them. Was there enough of him to keep her satisfied? And what could she possibly give to him in return. He was a mountain, a fortress, and she was only one woman, wanting to be let in. 

These were his terms, she realised, Sasha and Kolya were non-negotiable. But maybe that loyalty, that fortress, could be hers, too. 

“You’re a good man, Sergei. You deserve good things.”

He didn’t move, not to shake his head or shift away, but the denial radiated out of him.

Cat rose to her knees and insinuated herself in his lap, straddling his thighs and winding herself around him. Her arms encompassed his great shoulders, her face pressed in to his neck, body tight against his. 

“You deserve good things, baby. It’s ok to accept them.”

A slight shudder ran through him and his arms came around her, gradually pressing tighter and tighter. Cat rubbed slowly at the nape of his neck, the other hand sliding up to cup his head, pulling his face down into her, like he had sought from her last night. 

“Good things. Such good things, baby. You’ve done so good.”

Something like a groan came from deep in his chest and he held her to him, unmoving. Cat breathed slowly, a little shallow because of his hold on her, and let herself relax into him. 

What did he allow himself? A daily trip to the gym? Sunday mornings with Sasha?Where was his play, his fun, his release? 

Cat had just assumed, when she first saw him, that there was no end of women, or men, who would think him desirable. But Sergei wasn’t an in and out kind of guy. She’d had to coax him, every step of the way. And then when she’d reached into his pants and touched him... He’d looked scared and sick and desperately lost. 

Seven years he’d looked for Sasha. Seven years of imagining the worst hell a human being could suffer. No wonder he shied away from sex, no wonder physical intimacy was something she had to clearly signal that she wanted. 

Emotional intimacy, though. Sergei was desperate for it, starving. He would take anything that she gave him and swallow it down deep, so deep. And vulnerable, he was desperately vulnerable. A sweet and tender boy locked inside a fortress the size of a mountain. If he would just let her in.

This was, this was getting... 

Cat knew herself, had trusted her initial impression when she had met Sergei. This, though, this was hard and fast and yet, with every passing day, she wanted to hang on to him harder and harder. 

A good man. A complicated one, but a very good man.

* * *

He held on to her, lost himself in her warmth, the rise and fall of her body, the pulse and beat below his cheek. There was something about Cat that fitted him, fitted in to him. She took all his hard edges and buffered them, somehow, soothed them, dulled them. Each time they threatened to cut her presence rose up to calm them.

A good man. A good man. Done good things.

Deserved good things. 

Deserved, maybe, to want this woman. 

The thought grew slowly, unfurling, settling low inside him, slipping into his blood, warming the sleeping heart of him, filling his chest and cock with need for her, want, calling out for her. 

“Koshka,” he said into her skin, lips brushing her neck, his hands skimming her back, finding the curves of her ass and stroking. His cock grew and he pressed her into its growing bulge. 

“Koshka,” he murmured, turning his head to her jaw, kisses following the shape of it until he kissed the corner of her mouth. She was still, had him wondering if he were asleep but then the corner of her mouth curled and her eyes crinkled and she giggled as he growled at her teasing and pressed his lips to hers. Her laughter bubbled up and her mouth opened and he was taking her, rolling his hips up as his tongue sought out hers. 

Cat shifted, coming more above him, taking her weight on her knees so she could grind herself against him. Reaching for her behind, Sergei ran his hands over the soft curves, dragging the fabric of her dress upwards until he could run over her leggings beneath. Her hands cupped his face sliding back into the short hairs at the nape of his neck, tensing against his scalp as his kisses moved lower, following the line of her throat.

Leaning her head back, Cat hummed her pleasure as nipped down to the skin just above the neckline of her dress, the line of buttons obstructing his progress. Cat leaned back into his hands that were supporting her behind and reached for the top button. Sergei's eyes fixed on her fingers as she worked each one until the dress was open to the bottom of her chest. Cat ran her fingers back up the fabric to cup her breasts and Sergei stiffened, his gaze lifting to her face, eyes wide and vulnerable. 

Cat sensed the tension and stopped, reaching for his hair, stroking her fingers through it. “What is it?”

He looked at her helplessly, unable to find the words to explain, unable to settle on one feeling to explain. Anticipation, fear. Guilt, need. Want, self-disgust.

“We don’t have to do anything, baby. Not unless you’re ready.” Her hands fell to cup his face and she pressed her lips to his. “Not unless you want to.”

“I want...” he tried to articulate how much he wanted her, how gloriously attractive she was, how he had been consumed with thoughts of being close to her since they met. “I want you, Koshka.”

“Do you want to touch me?” She wondered and when he nodded a yes, Cat reached back for his hand, bringing it to her mouth and kissing the pad of each finger, the base of his thumb. 

“Follow.” She placed his hand over hers and brought it to the neck of her dress, stroking the creamy, freckled skin of the slope of her breast. 

With his fingers between hers, Sergei touched her, following as she moved the fabric aside, exposing the edge of a lacy white bra. Cat watched him carefully. “Touch me,” she commanded gently, moving her hand from under his, leaving his fingers spread over her bared skin, his palm resting on her nipple, a hardening point through the layers between. 

Cat looked down to watch as he traced the edge of the lace, the rise and fall of her chest quickening. “I like it when you touch me. Like how your hand looks, your fingers stroking my skin. Do you like it, baby?”

Sergei nodded, mesmerised by the same thing she was looking at, the way his hand fit the generous swell of her, the contrast between his skin and hers, dark against the pale cream. He shifted his hand, fingers stroking the skin under the lace edge, reaching deeper, following the shape of her. When he leaned in to kiss the exposed curve, Cat whimpered at the sight, the tentative tenderness stealing the air from her lungs. 

“Like that,” she murmured, “Just like that. More please, baby.”

He kissed her again, his confidence growing, fingers moving lower, tracing the lace, thumb finding her nipple and circling, stroking until it was a hard point, his lips moving lower until his kisses met the apex of the lace covering her. 

Cat moved her dress aside where it covered her other breast, inviting his touch there, too. Then his hand stilled and his other came up to trace the newly exposed skin, surprise on his face. 

Where he had expected more of her delicate, pale skin, the edge of a tattoo showed from beneath her bra. 

“Do you want to see more?” Cat wondered. Sergei nodded and she reached for her shoulder, pulling bra strap, dress and cardigan down until her shoulder was bare and all of her breast to the top of the areole was visible. 

The tattoo was extensive, tendrils and leaves extending to the apex of her shoulder, flowers overlapping, covering all of the skin that was typical covered by her bra and extending on further, clearly an intricate design.

“Beautiful,” Sergei whispered, reverential, his fingers tracing the artwork. “Take a long time.”

“A year,” Cat confirmed. “Want to see more?” 

“Show me,” he asked.

Cat reached for the rest of buttons down her front and paused. “It’s big. Ok if I take my dress off?”

Sergei responded by starting on the buttons at the hem, Cat working her way down to meet him. With a careful eye on his reaction, she drew dress and cardigan back, pulling them from her arms, letting them fall to the floor at Sergei’s feet. 

Cat put her arm behind her head and twisted, so that he could see the brightly coloured flowers that extended from her underarm and disappeared into the waist of her leggings. They wrapped around her stomach and back, almost meeting on the other side. Sergei followed the pattern with his fingertips, alighting on the lower band of her bra, travelling to the first breast she had revealed to him where the artwork disappeared again, the skin beneath still hidden. 

The longer he looked, the more he saw. It wasn’t just flowers and leaves like he had first thought, there were insects and animals - a butterfly, a glossy green beetle, the face of a rabbit half hidden by leaves. 

“You are art,” he told Cat, hands moving boldly over her skin in his distraction.

“Thank you,” Cat said, “Aileen helped me come up with the overall idea and we found a brilliant artist who translated it into a design and then inked it.”

“I see how it took a year.” He pushed the other strap of her bra back, tentatively pulling back the lace to see the skin beneath. It was blank.

“Want to see the rest?” Cat reached for the clasp of her bra.

Sergei leaned forward, kissing her, hands resting on her waist. She let the bra fall free, sliding her arms from the straps, hands holding the cups to herself until Sergei pulled back from the kiss.

She watched his eyes fall to her chest and pulled the bra away, exposing herself. On one, the puckered areole was surrounded by a wreath of flowers and leaves, on the other the design followed the underside curve of her breast, a final tendril following the outside curve, reaching towards her nipple, most of the skin on the upper slope blank.

It was that breast that he gently cupped, lips following the tendril in a trail of kisses, circling, but avoiding her nipple, coming to rest in the valley between. He sucked slowly at the edge of the design there and Cat groaned, her hips pushing into his involuntarily. 

“Mark me,” she asked him and felt the tightening of her skin, the small sharp sting of his teeth as he raised the blood to the surface. When he was done, Sergei pulled back, considering the mark, Cat also looking at it, the dark red surrounding by white, the more permanent ink just below it. “I’m yours, Sergei,” she whispered, lifting his chin with her fingers and kissing him forcefully, rolling her hips again. 

His hands came to cup Cat’s bare breasts, large thumbs stroking the pointed nipples, applying pressure that made her squirm and push her chest into his grip. 

Her hands shook as she brushed the skin of his neck, feeling the edge of Sergei’s collar. “Can I touch you?” She asked, fingertips tracing down to the first closed button.

“I want you to,” he answered and her fingers began working the buttons free, his hands and fingers spread wide to hold her torso, thumbs still stroking over her nipples.

Cat reached the last button after tugging the tails of his shirt free and pulled the fabric open, revealing Sergei’s bare chest. She remembered feeling it from the other night, but now she was looking. There was very little spare in the shape of him, huge, but muscular, body shaped by the time he spent in the gym. The smoky black of old tattoos were partially obscured under the dark hair that covered his chest, thinning over his abdominals, coming together in a denser trail that enticed her downwards. 

Deliberately, Cat raised her gaze back to his neck, the index finger of each hand tracing the cords of his throat, the shape of his collarbone, pushing the fabric from his shoulders, coming to rest with her palms over the hollow before the joint. Cat raised her eyes to his, thumbs moving back and forth over his skin.

“You are so beautiful,” she told him when his eyes met hers. When he went to look away, she touched her fingers to his jaw to stop him. “I want to know every part of you, touch every part, kiss it all. So beautiful, baby.”

Her thumb brushed over his lips, pressing into the deliciously plush curve of them and she kissed him lightly, thumb between them. Then she slid her hand down his skin, leaning down to kiss where it trailed, across his pecs, down his sternum, back up to first one nipple and then mirroring the path to the other. 

“I’m going to taste you, baby,” Cat told him, tongue tip flicking his nipple. He drew in a breath at the testing touch, but his fingers kept moving over her breasts, so she ran the flat of her tongue over him in a long, slow swipe. The muscles beneath her mouth twitched and the breath he’d been holding eased out of him with a moan.

Encouraged, Cat licked Sergei again, circling her tongue over him until his thumbs bore roughly down on her nipples in response. 

“You like me tasting you? Like me making you hard?” Cat looked up as she kissed her way across, teasing the other with the tip of her tongue, watching his skin tic and then sucking the tight point into her mouth until he moaned again, louder, less controlled. 

Cat returned to his lips, kissing him deep, their tongues stroking each other, making Cat roll into his hips and Sergei push up against her. 

“I want you, baby, want to feel you everywhere.” Cat dragged her fingernails down his chest, grinding against his hard length. “I want you inside me, filling me.” She grasped one of his hands, dragging it down to between her legs, pushing his fingers where she wanted them, wanted him to feel how wet and hot she was. “That’s all you. How much I want you.”

Sergei felt the seam of her leggings, a light pressure as he dipped further down, running back up and passing over her clit, making her grunt with need. His hand trailed upwards, leaving the smooth fabric to run over her skin until he held her face in his hands. Eyes closed, he pulled her forehead to his. 

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt me? You’re not going to hurt me, baby.”

The tension returned to his body and he held her tighter between his hands. “You haven’t... you don’t know.”

“Know what?” Cat asked.

His hand trembled as he grasped hers, leading her to touch his length, unable to say the words. Sergei guided her fingers from his root to his tip, nearly at the point of his hip, hard and broad.

Cat mmmed as she felt him, running her fingers down to his balls and then back to the wide head. “I want you, baby. Want all of you.” As she said all, she cupped his length, stroking him harder, hand firm against him and pushing her way between his legs, pressing her fingers down, rubbing, cupping, dragging back up until he groaned and thrust into her hand. 

Cat slid her cheek along his until her lips were by his ear. “I like big cocks, big men who hold me down and spread me wide. I want you, I want your cock and I want you to fill me completely and make me come so hard I scream, baby.”

She was working over the head of his swollen length when he tensed again, rising up into her hand and then he cried her name as he jerked and spasmed beneath her fingers, coming hard in his pants.

Cat kept rubbing at his head until the strain melted from him and the hard ridge under her fingers began to soften.

He moaned, distraught and Cat was quick to counter him. “That was so hot, baby. To make you come,” she licked his ear lobe, “Just with my voice, my touch.” She kissed his cheek, “To know how bad you must want me. To know you must have been thinking about me.”

She grasped his jaw tightly with her thumb and forefinger and kissed him forcefully until he parted his lips for her and let her taste him and tease until a whimper escaped his lungs.

“That’s right, baby. I’m yours and you’re mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Notes**
> 
> Nyet - no
> 
> Varenyky - dough dumpling shaped like half moons and filled with something savoury or sweet. The ones Sasha made are filled with garlic and mashed potato, boiled most of the way to cooked and then drained and fried with bacon or pork belly. Varenyky are from a family of dumpling and stuffed dough dishes common across Europe, sharing heritage with Pierogies, Pasties and Piragi.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated, as always, to the goddess of original fic, @lovestuck.

#### Black Friday

Clouds dulled the early light and Sergei came awake slowly for the second morning in a row. This time he wasn’t alone. Cat was still asleep beside him laying face down, her hand against his hip keeping contact between them, even in sleep. 

Sergei wasn’t used to getting this kind of rest - companionable, relaxed - or waking with the option of something else to do than running or going to work. 

He rolled to face Cat and lay his fingers over hers, watching her sleep, pondering the possibility of waking up beside day after day. 

Cat came awake in pieces, a process that was mesmerising to watch. Before anything else, a long sigh signalled her changing state. Her fingers flexed under his and her eyes opened, taking him in, before they closed again while she stretched from tip to toes. When that was complete, she looked at him again.

“Been awake long?”

“Not long,” Sergei replied. “It’s quiet. And I don’t have something to do, so I was thinking.”

“Thinking what?” Cat shifted her shoulder to look at him more comfortably. 

“Where else I would go if I didn’t have to be in New York. Maybe a place with water.” 

Time seemed suspended in the place that he and Cat inhabited, both last night and then this morning. It required only a small step of imagination for Sergei to find himself in a place other than here. 

“The beach?” 

“No,” his nose scrunched up at the seuggestion. “Sand is annoying. Lake, maybe, or a river. Green things, living things everywhere you see.”

Cat smiled. “That sounds really lovely. You wouldn’t miss the city?”

Sergei thought about it. “Not very much. And city is always close, just take car or plane. Or maybe just go away for a little time.”

“Do you ever go away on vacation?”

“No. There’s always Sasha and Kolya.”

Cat leant up on her arm, “What, no vacation _ever_?” She teased.

“When we were small, Sasha and I stay with my grandparents in the summer. But when my father died, we never went again.” His father, weakened by the cancer, had caught pneumonia that winter. He’d gone in to hospital and never come out. 

“How old were you?” Cat wondered, reaching to place a hand against his chest. 

“Fourteen, Sasha was ten. That was when I started,” he gestured to the bottom of a tattoo protruding from under the sleeve of his tee, “To look after us both.”

“Your mother?” Cat asked, looking at the tattoo Sergei had indicated. His sleeve covered all by but the base of the ornamented cross.

“I don’t remember her. She died when Sasha was born.”

Cat nodded, fingertips gently stroking where they rested over his sternum. “I’m sorry. When I was telling you about my parents on Wednesday night, I didn’t think... what that might mean to you, about your family.”

Sergei shook his head, his hand embracing hers. “We both have hard stories of family. Don’t be sorry for it.” He pulled her to him and Cat came willingly into his arms. He kissed her hair. 

Cat closed her eyes, pressing her forehead into the centre of Sergei’s chest. 

Family was a matter of definition. Sasha was all that was left of his blood kin, but Kolya, and all of the Cordovas, were his family by choice - theirs and his. And Maks might be Kolya’s uncle but Alessio and Illyana had left him behind decades ago. Sergei thought that he had found family under Maks’ tutelage, but he knew now that the family of thieves were nothing but desperate and depraved men brought together by circumstance. Family was a choice, not a last resort. 

The memory of those desperate teenage years must have echoed through his body because Cat was whispering soothing things to his chest, her hand rubbing over his side. Her aura was a beacon, calling him back to the present. The warmth of her body against his, the scent of her hair under his nose, the thrill of her touch as her fingers explored under the hem of his shirt, fingertips stroking over skin. 

Arousal crept up on Sergei, distracted as he was by the soft skin of Cat’s arm, warm under his palm. He was nervous about intimacy after the events of the past few nights and rolled his hip back and away from Cat. She seemed as surprised as he, her fingers stilling and then moving away, reaching for a pillow to pull under her head. 

“What do you have to do today?” Cat asked. 

Sergei blinked slowly, his eyes shaped by concentration. “Ellie is away with her mother and other people are watching her. I should check in with Kolya, see what he plans to do about Zhurov.” And Sasha, he thought. He needed to find a way to tell her that the Russian was in New York, meddling in Kolya’s business. 

Cat’s disappointment was palpable, although she tried to hide it. “I have no plans for the weekend, what with Cattails being closed. So, maybe later?”

“I did not want to assume... “ Sergei told her, hand cupping the back of her neck, wishing that he had nothing more to do than spend the weekend with her. Perhaps it was time to tell Kolya about Cat.

“Ahh,” Cat grinned. “Let me fix that. You’re welcome to stay for the weekend.”

“I take you to dinner?” He asked, thumb tracing the line of Cat’s jaw, moving in to kiss her, slow and purposeful and very much meant to get her heart racing. 

A thrill ran through him, a flutter of hope that he hadn’t messed up last night after all, a flutter that became a surge of bold desire as Cat’s hands pushed his shirt up, caressing his back. Sergei rolled, half pinning her, cock hardening when she moaned into the kiss. 

Sergei pulled back and gave her a wide smile. “I could get take out and we eat here.”

“We could watch something, or...” Cat was breathing hard, the rise and fall of her chest against his distracting. 

“Or what?” Sergei asked.

“Make out like teenagers, again.”

Sergei hesitated to respond. He still didn’t know how he felt about the night before. Cat had seemed to want intercourse, but then he had come so suddenly and everything just stopped. He didn’t understand why. 

“Baby?” Cat got his attention, hand cupping his cheek. “What we did last night was good, I enjoyed it. I’m thinking that it’s good to take things slow.” Her eyes roamed his face, searching. 

Questions, doubts, raced through Sergei’s mind and he struggled to identify the most important one. 

“Why... stop?” His gaze shifted nervously as his body became still and tight. “Why not do more?”

“Did you want to do more?”

“I want to pleasure you.”

“Lots of things bring me pleasure. What did you want?”

“To... have sex.”

Cat considered, “I wasn’t sure that you were really comfortable with having intercourse. There are lots of things that give me pleasure. But doing things that make you uncomfortable makes me uncomfortable.”

Against his back, her hand curled, nails dragging at his skin, “But whispering in your ear and making you come, that was really nice. That was pleasure, for me.”

“Why not do it anyway?” This was what confused him, Cat could have had him however she had wanted and he would have gone along with it. Would have done anything to erase that one, uncontrolled moment. 

“Lots of reasons. Most of all, I want to spend a long time exploring things with you. A bad beginning could ruin that.”

For the first time he realised that Cat was sincere, that it didn’t matter to her that he hadn’t been able to penetrate her, to give her an orgasm. “Last night, when I... that wasn’t bad?”

“No, not for me. For you?”

“I don’t know.” He knew the mechanics of sex but the negotiation and communication around intimacy was mostly unexplored territory. 

“It’s not what you expected,” Cat observed. 

“No.” 

“Sergei, can I ask... have you been with a lot of women?”

“How many is a lot?” He deflected, inexplicably embarrassed by the idea that Cat thought him inexperienced, even though he could admit to himself that he was. 

Cat chuckled, “Good point.” He remained quiet as she thought of what to say. “There’s an image, of men who do your kind of work, that you would see a lot of women or have a girlfriend or a wife and also a mistress.”

Sergei was already frowning. “That’s... TV.”

“Yeah,” Cat agreed, puzzled by her own thoughts. “So that’s not true.”

“No,” Sergei was quick to say. But then he thought of Kolya and all the women that he preened for. But Ellie, he reminded himself, for Ellie, he was something else again. “Some men, yes. But not all. Not me.”

“No. I didn’t think so. When I first saw you, you were so handsome and sweet and I thought you must be married or have a lover. Or be out with someone new every week.”

Sergei remained quiet, listening.

“But now I know you better, I think that maybe... “

He looked at Cat, holding his breath while waiting for her to continue. 

“That you want to be close with someone who knows you first. And with someone who understands that your life is, and has been, complicated.”

Complicated. Sex was complicated, intimacy was more so. He recalled sweet Russian girls, coy in front of others, demanding, leading in private. Emaciated working girls, on tiny beds in tiny rooms. Then Renee - six months trying to work out what she wanted him to be when all he could be was a desperate man trying to find his sister. Kolya had a lead on Sasha and Sergei left New York suddenly, had come back to find her things gone from his apartment and the spare key on the counter without even a note to say goodbye. 

Better. He had to do better this time. 

“What about you?”

“What do I want?” Cat gave thought to an answer. “The more I get to know you, the more I think that what I really want is you.” Cat glanced at him. “Is that too much?”

“Too much?” She had said the same thing last week.

“I am worried that what I want is more than you want to give.”

Sergei was quiet, thinking for a long time. “There is not simple answer for you.”

“No, of course not. I understand,” Cat began to pull away. 

“No. Wait,” he begged, reaching for her. “I think in Russian, it takes time to put things in English to make the words mean what I say.”

“Okay.” The tension and guarded look in her eyes receded. 

How to tell her that he had made a vow, while he sat on the couch beside Sasha night after night, that he would be nothing but a shield for her and Kolya for the rest of his days. 

“When Sasha was first healing and I began to know what had happened. I had seen where she was, seen the other women... No, is not the beginning.”

How to tell her about the working girls, their thin bodies, sallow skin, the imitation of a lover that had become harder and harder to believe in with each drive he made into Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland. How delivering and retrieving human cargo had broken him bit by bit until there was nothing left but a shadow of a man, crying for his father, begging Maks to release him.

Sergei drew in a choked breath. 

“The whole story is long, very long. I have done many wrong things, very, very bad things. Sasha was taken and she had so much hurt, because of me. When Sasha came back I vow to care for her, to serve Kolya and not have things for myself.”

“Including a lover?”

A lover, a partner, comfort beside him, all denied to himself because he had been unable to keep Sasha from being touched by his corruption. 

“Yes.”

“What changed your mind?”

A light in the dark, a flash of a smile, a long, pale braid. A young slip of a thing who looked at him and saw and was not afraid. 

A man, brother of the heart, who reached into the corruption and pulled him free of it. Who had found Sasha. _Whatever she needs, Sergei, whatever it costs._

“Ellie. Because Kolya is happy when he is with her. And I see her growing happy, too.” The simple thought, the idea that maybe he could have that, share that, too. “I think that I want to know what that is like.”

“That’s very romantic,” Cat observed.

“You sell romance,” he countered, the words forming in his mouth before he had time to think them in Russian. 

“I don’t sell it. I sell things that help romance.” Cat thumped Sergei’s shoulder but he was unmovable. 

“You have to learn more about Russians. We are very romantic people.” Romantic, passionate, steadfast. All or nothing. Sergei knew no other way to love someone. 

“I think I’ve found a good teacher.” Caressing his arm, Cat smiled up at him.

“Americans have strange ideas about romance.” And commitment and family. Sergei would have to explain it her, one day. 

“Fortunate that I'm not all American, then.”

“Hmm,” he hummed, pleased. “True. There is hope for you.”

“You could teach me something now?” Cat suggested, sultry, her hands wandering.

“Tselovat’,” and he kissed her slowly and thoroughly until she moaned into his mouth. There was something about kissing Cat, something that made him crave her kisses.

“Mne nravitsya tselovat' tebya.” _I like kissing you._

Cat smiled, “Say it slower.”

“Tselovat’,” he repeated.

“Slov-it.”

He kissed her again, crowding her with his body until she arched into him, toes digging in to the sheets. 

“Tselovat’,” he repeated quietly.

“Sslovat.”

He leaned close to her ear. “Each time you say it, I will kiss you.”

“Sslovat,” Cat said immediately.

He began kissing along the side of her neck and then paused, lips hovering.

“Sslovat.”

Sergei resumed, lips moving over her collarbone, his hand running over her stomach, making her tense into his touch.

“Sslovat,” she said before he could stop and he chuckled as he nipped and kissed his way from the point of her shoulder to her upper chest. His fingers found the hem of her nightshirt and slid under it, moving over her hip.

“Sslo... vat,” she crooned as he used his teeth on the soft flesh of her breast, his hand on her waist, caressing.

He paused over her nipple, defined under the fabric. “Koshka,” he prompted. 

“Tselovat,” she groaned. Sergei nearly echoed her. 

His mouth closed around her nipple, tongue teasing and then he began to suck. Maybe this was better than kissing her, the squirming and writing mixed with moans, knowing he could do this to her. 

Sergei released her slowly, lips nibbling and grasping as he pulled away, moving back to Cat’s mouth, rubbing his nose against hers.

“Was that pleasure?” He wondered, half smiling.

“Mmm. Yes. Da?” Cat arched her body against him and Sergei moved to pin her with a hand on her hip. 

“Da,” he breathed over her lips, eyes fixed on Cat’s as she squirmed against his hold trying to roll her hips against him. 

He was kissing her again when his phone rang. He tried to ignore it, but Cat had clearly felt the instinctive twitch, quickly suppressed, to reach for it.

“It’s ok,” she prodded. “You said you had to work.”

Sergei sighed and brushed his lips over hers before sitting up and reaching for his phone.

“Da?” He answered, slipping into Russian.

* * *

“Pa’s had some news from the old country. Liam and I are heading out to visit the extended family.” 

Kolya’s voice had the echoing airy sound of being on hands free. 

“News?” Sergei asked. 

After a caress between his shoulders, Cat was up, heading for the bathroom.

“I’ll catch you up when you make your delivery. What are you doing, today?”

The illusion of being in a different time and place began to fade as Sergei remembered the USB stick with footage from the Roastery in the jacket pocket of his suit. 

He glanced towards the bathroom, the door cracked and the shower running, that other world beckoning. But there was a dangerous man with even more dangerous intent roaming New York. Kolya needed him to lean on their Russian connections. “Catching up with my side of the family. Any news from your uncle?” 

“No. I don’t have his new address. Think you can find out?” Kolya asked. They were careful when on the phone, even when speaking in Russian. They never knew who might be listening in. 

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Sergei replied. “There’s something else. I need a complete package from the security team, today.”

There was a faint sniff that could have been surprise or amusement. “How big a package?”

“Brownstone, single floor. Four, maybe five cameras.” Sergei rose, picking up his suit pants from where they were draped over a chair and began dressing. 

“Anyone I know?” 

Sergei hesitated to answer. Telling Kolya about Cat would be the end of the illusion that whatever was developing between them was seperate from the cold reality of who he was and what he did for a living. 

“No. A woman, someone I met a few weeks ago.”

“Ahh. Madame Floriste.” There was a faint laugh followed by a muffled slap. Sergei could picture Liam’s amusement and the quick cuff over the ear that Kolya had handed out. 

“So you know.”

This time Kolya was suppressing a laugh, “Not even Sasha needs that many bouquets. Is it serious?”

“Could be,” Sergei exchanged a smile with Cat as she stepped out of the bathroom wrapped in a robe and began rummaging in her closet. Turning away, he waited until she was done dressing before looking back. Still speaking in Russian, he added, “Met her sister yesterday.”

“And Sasha?” Kolya wondered. 

“The four of us had Thanksgiving together.”

“She’s Irish,” Kolya remarked. “No connections?”

“Her father’s doing life an English prison.” Dressed, Cat left the room and Sergei was able to slip into English for a moment. “IRA.”

“Told her what you do?” The apprehension in the question was clear, even over the phone.

“She’s got an idea, says she isn’t worried.” In answering, Sergei wondered how much Ellie knew about what Kolya did, if that was why he’d allowed Sergei to bring Ellie to Elysium on Wednesday night. 

“ _Udáchi Seryoga_. I look forward to meeting the woman who finally turned your head.”

“What makes you think she’d want to meet an overstuffed pigeon like you?”

Liam laughed out loud in the background and Sergei heard Kolya cuff him again. Shrugging into a clean shirt, Sergei shuffled the phone from one shoulder to the other. 

“12.30 for lunch?”

Sergei picked his watch up from the nightstand, glancing at the time as he fastened it around his wrist. “Juan’s?”

“See you there.” The connection went dead and Sergei slid the phone into his pocket, looping a tie around his neck. From the kitchen the whistle of Cat’s kettle was winding up. 

* * *

After turning the kettle on, Cat warmed leftover cornbreads in the microwave. Alone she probably would have had pie for breakfast, but she wasn’t ready to share all of her vices with Sergei yet. 

Sergei emerged mostly dressed and finished buttoning his shirt as Cat poured hot water into two mugs. 

“That was Kolya?” She asked.

“May I?” Sergei reached for a cornbread. She nodded and he answered before taking a bite. “We need to know why Zhurov is here. I’m going to visit some people, see what they can tell me.”

Cat removed both their teabags and squeezed lemon and honey into Sergei’s, handing it to him. He washed down the mouthful of cornbread, wincing at the heat and making Cat chuckle. “You watched me pour that.”

Sheepish, he put the mug down. “We have company for security. I would like someone to come by today, look at your place.”

Cat stopped what she was doing and looked at Sergei, her brow furrowing. “What I have isn’t good enough?”

The look he gave her was direct and uncompromising. “If it were, I would not recommend improving it.”

“How much?”

Sergei took a second cornbread. “We pay for it. Business expense.”

The feeling of unease grew, although Cat couldn’t say exactly what troubled her. “Sergei, I have money, and a business of my own. I can pay for it.”

“I will give you all the information, who does it, paperwork, how to work it. But this is normal business for us. For family.”

Cat wondered whether challenging his definition of family would make her seem petulant or even dismissive. But hadn’t she just told him the other night that she understood the costs of being close to him? “What about the other residents?” Cat had neighbours above and below. 

“The front door security, anything external, should all be changed. But we can handle that in time. We can make your apartment more secure now.”

“Well, of course. Yes. Just let me know who is coming so I let the right strangers in to my apartment.” Her tone was tight, reflecting the uncomfortable feeling in her chest. 

Sergei took a step towards her and then hesitated. “Is this scaring you?”

“A little, yeah,” Cat responded, unmoving. “What about my shop?”

“I’ll talk to our people today, set something up for tomorrow or Sunday. You are closed until Monday?” he checked.

Cat nodded, unable to meet his eyes. 

Sergei closed the distance between them, reaching for Cat’s forearms. “I’m sorry. This is my fault, our fault. Kolya and I weren’t taking Zhurov seriously enough.” She let him take hold of her, the presence, the solid weight of him reassuring. “If I had been more aware, I would have not got you involved.”

“How?” Cat asked her stomach falling, loss and disappointment washing through her in a wave. “By never coming back to my shop?”

Sergei nodded and leant his forehand down to press into Cat’s hair, pulling her to his chest. 

“Too late, now.” Cat murmured, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist. They barely met behind his back. “You’re mine and I'm yours.”

“Koshka,” he kissed her hair and then he asked, “Tselovat’?”

Cat tipped her face up to his and he kissed her, warm and slow. Despite her uncertainties, this felt right, felt practiced, like a dance they had been rehearsing forever and were finally able to perform. 

“Stay safe,” Cat asked him. “I want you on my couch tonight.”

Sergei kissed her lightly once more and then stepped away, finishing his tie as he walked to the door. “I’ll call you when things are arranged with the security team.”

Cat watched the door close behind him and leant against the counter with a sigh. Her life had gone from simple to complicated in the blink of an eye. 

* * *

Ending the call, Sergei pulled out into jumbled traffic patterns of Black Friday. Pockets of the city were at a standstill while other areas normally crowded with workers and cars were deserted. 

Cat had sounded more relaxed on the phone than she had been when he left her apartment. _In control_ , he mused, remembering her calm, no nonsense demeanour from the night before. Without meaning to, he’d rattled her this morning. She might understand but hadn’t experienced what it was like to be a part of Kolya’s circle, to be a part of Sergei’s life. Again, he regretted returning to her shop.

It was too late now. 

_“I’m yours and you’re mine.”_

He felt he truth of it deep in his chest. A knot of emotions that Cat had unearthed in him were sometimes painful, overwhelming and yet, last night...

The way she had held him, not just with hands but with voice and eyes and _something_ that made the passing of time this other thing. Long, slow kisses with her arms tight around his shoulders, hands in his hair, her body pressed to his. He had made a few attempts to heat things back up, but at each turn was met with her soft resistance, her body wrapped around his so tightly that there was nothing to do but hold her and be held. 

The warmth of her leisurely, suggestive voice in his ear, planting ideas about shower and bed and sleep. The hands pulling him up from the couch, the final kiss before she left him in the bedroom, depositing his bag on the bed. The hot wash of the shower, the towels that smelled like her hair, the lemon drenched steam that rose from the mug of tea she had waiting beside the bed. The gentle stroke of her fingers on his thigh while he drank and she read. The final suggestion to lie down. Warmth against his back as she curled against him again. And, when his hand found her knee, the oblivion of a dreamless sleep.

The knot in his chest tightened and then eased.

_“I’m yours and you’re mine.”_

* * *

Dimitri was very polite but barely said a word. Julia, though, chatted to her the whole time. She wasn’t sure if it had been Sergei’s idea to send a woman as part of the security tech team, but Cat appreciated it nonetheless. 

In her bedroom, Cat folded laundry while Julia installed the window sensors. 

“Where do you want the camera in here?”

“A camera?” Cat asked, astonished. “Sergei just said window and door sensors.” Well, he had implied that was all.

“Full package was the only details I got.” Julia stowed a screwdriver in her tool belt and leant against the window frame to talk to Cat. “You haven’t had this sort of surveillance before.” 

When Cat shook her head, Julia walked around the room, looking at ceiling.

“Here,” she squinted. “We can narrow the field of view to take in just the door and windows and the camera would only catch the corner of the bed. It’s a compromise, but better than having nothing at all.” Julia paused and winked at Cat. “And you can always just turn it off with the app if you want complete privacy for a while.”

Cat managed a smile at that and helped Julia move a dresser so she could start setting the camera up. “You do a lot of places like mine?” She wondered. 

“A few,” Julia shrugged. “A lot more businesses. The boss said to talk to you about a time to do yours. What kind of place you got?”

“A florists, over by Trinity College. Just a little shop, front room and back. I hardly ever use the back door, especially not in the winter.”

“You check it though, right? To be sure no one’s tried to force it or anything.” 

Cat stopped and looked at Julia. “You’re going to think I'm an idiot when I tell you no.”

“Nah,” Julia said, climbing down from her small stepladder. “Most people’ve never had to worry about this sort of stuff. Especially not if your business doesn’t do a lot of cash or have stuff worth stealing. But if you’re needing this kind of thing now, may as well know how to get the best from it, right?”

With a helpless smile, Cat shrugged. “I guess so.”

Two more hours and Julia had shown her how to work all the electronics, helped her set up the app and alerts on her phone and given her some practical tips on preventing and detecting entry. Dimitri was taking the last of their gear down to the van while Julia finished up the paperwork. 

“Sunday at 11,” Julia confirmed, putting the appointment into her phone. She pulled a card from her pocket, flipped it over and scribbled a number on the back. “Any questions or concerns, just give me a call.”

Cat took the card. 

“I’m looking forward to seeing your shop,” Julia remarked, putting the pen in her pocket and tugging on her ponytail. “That’s my cell. Call, if you need something.”

“I will.” Cat tipped her head slightly, looking at Julia again, thoughtful. “See you Sunday.”

“Great!” Julia smiled widely and and left, pulling the door shut behind her. 

_Well. It didn’t rain but it poured,_ Cat thought, turning the card in her hand over, seeing the business landline on the front and the number handwritten on the back. 

Cat lay the card on top of the manuals and duplicates of the paperwork that Julia had left and walked around her apartment, staring at the four cameras the team had installed. She even opened her door to look at the fifth one out on the landing. After shutting it and turning the deadbolt Cat paused, considering Julia’s card once more. 

_'Mam would have a blue fit.’_ Aileen’s words from the day before came back to her. It had been easy to judge her mother, ten years later and all three of them still alive. And it had been easy, maybe far too easy, to tell Sergei that she knew what secrets and risks he brought with him. 

But this - cameras and sensors and alerts and panic buttons - this was hard. This was real. A ruthless Russian mob boss who had sold a teenage girl into sexual slavery just to teach Sergei a lesson was _hard_. Fucking hard. 

And now she was in this, in with them, whoever Sergei was in with. _Kolya_. Cat realised that she didn’t even have a last name for Sergei’s boss, didn’t know at what level he worked. His boss owned the security company, but did that mean he was running things - she didn’t even know the right terms for the mob or the mafia - locally or city-wide. International?

If things didn’t work out with Sergei... he didn’t seem the type to carry it too far, to refuse to walk away. But then, those guys never did at first, did they? What could she do if that happened?

Well. Rip that fucking camera out of her bedroom ceiling, to start with. 

Cat took a slow, deep breath. _This is isn’t me, I don't do hysterics._

Talk with him. Just another thing that they needed to work out.

But she’d hang on to Julia’s number. It was good to have a reminder that there were other options.

* * *

Sergei returned after dark with Chinese takeout and apologies for his lateness. While Cat set up their dinner on her coffee table, he inspected the work of the security team. Cat was seated on the couch starting in on the beef and broccoli when he paused in her bedroom doorway. 

“There's a camera in here,” Sergei stated, “I didn't... “

“Full package,” Cat told him, chopsticks paused in mid air. 

Face blank, Sergei looked back into her bedroom, neck muscles flexing as he swallowed. 

“Koshka, I... “

“Should have told me?” She suggested. 

Sergei pivoted, that blank expression turned on her, “Should never have let you become involved.”

There was a tightness in her chest for a moment, then Cat released it along with a breath. “I understood, Sergei, what choosing to become involved meant. We share in that choice. But this,” she gestured towards the bedroom, watched the flicker of _something_ roll through the giant man’s impassive facade, “We need to share all of it. The information, the decisions. You don’t just get to come into my life, my home and start making decisions for me, without me.”

“I can’t,” he stepped towards her, sitting gingerly on the opposite end of the couch. That something was back, a flicker of pain, a twist of his mouth, a twitch of the jaw. “I watched him take Sasha away. He taunted me, Koshka, for two years told me I could buy her back if I just did what he wanted. I carried her from that place where Kolya found her...”

Sergei turned away, swallowing, a thick and heavy thing rolling slowly down his throat. Cat set down her food and moved, sitting before him on the coffee table. Leaning across the space, Cat wrapped her hands around the bulk of his upper arms, barely making half the circumference in her grip. 

“Every day I live with what I did, what I let happen to her. What I let happen to all the other ones... “ Sergei’s voice was hoarse, his body strained beneath her touch. 

“Baby,” Cat called to him, taking his face between her hands, fighting the strength of his body, the relentless grip of his guilt. “ _Baby_. You can protect me, I want you to protect me. But you owe me the truth. Not about everything, but about what is happening to me, to us.”

Slowly, she turned his face, brought it towards hers. “You can protect me from them, but you don’t need to protect me from you. You’re not going to hurt me.”

Sergei’s sudden gasp surprised her, as did the way his arms wrapped around her waist, dragging her into his lap, crushing her to his chest. 

“The truth, baby,” Cat told him, his face pressed to hers, “Promise me the truth about us, always.”

“I promise,” he choked out, finding her lips, the kiss rough and without finesse. His body was hard as stone, his embrace a bulwark against anything that could hurt them. Cat buried her fingers in his hair, stroking, soothing with words whispered against his lips. Eyes closed, his forehead rested against hers and Sergei finally began to relax.

A loud growl from Sergei’s stomach roused them both, Cat laughed as she leaned back, still on his knees. 

“Didn’t you have lunch?” She asked, reaching for the other take out container. 

“A couple of tacos with Kolya, but that was a long time ago.” He took the container from Cat, hand supporting her leg as she reached for her own.

“I was wondering, today, who Kolya is. Must be a connected guy if you can get a security team in here on Black Friday.” Cat looked up from her food, half expecting Sergei to deflect her question.

He huffed in amusement, surprising her. “You could say that. He’s Nicolas Cordova.”

Cat froze, chopsticks buried in a piece of broccoli. Sergei knew - worked for - a man whose name was thrown about in the media and featured prominently in New York folklore. “ _The_ Nicolas Cordova? Sweet Jesu.”

Face remaining impassive, Cat knew Sergei was watching her as she processed this piece of information. Other things he’d told her began falling in to place. Kolya’s mother cooked Russian food, had welcomed Sergei and Sasha into her family. Kolya had helped Sergei find Sasha after she’d been sold by Zhurov, and it took the man who ran New York three years to find her. Every time she found out more about Sergei, her understanding of what had happened to Sasha became darker and darker. 

Sergei rubbed at her thigh, “What are you thinking?”

“What the... I mean, I figured you were... but. Fuck. What are you, Cordova’s Lieutenant?” She tried to make that role fit with her mental picture of Sergei, gentle giant. 

A twitch of amusement and the shrug of a shoulder. “Kolya’s not... he runs things differently, very differently. More like a proper business, less of _The Godfather_.”

“You’ve done it, then. Killed people.” Her tone was even, she tried to keep from sounding like she was judging him.

“Yes, Koshka,” he kept his gaze on her. “Many people. Many of them deserved it. Some, I regret. Some give me no choice.”

“Why not kill Zhurov, then?” 

The question surprised Sergei and he reached past her to put his box of food on the table, resettling with his hands relaxed on her thighs. “A lot of reasons. Zhurov’s boss of big family in Russia and that would cause a lot of trouble for Kolya. And while we don’t like him, we know Zhurov and how he works. And he’s Kolya’s mother’s brother, though that matters only a little.”

“But, he threatened Kolya’s girlfriend. He sold Sasha!” Cat’s brow furrowed.

Sergei’s expression remained blank, but his hands tightened on Cat’s thighs. It was a moment before he answered, “I owe Kolya everything, I can’t let personal feelings override what is best for him, for all of us.” Then his expression did change and Sergei licked his lips. “Kolya _has_ given me permission.”

“Permission to what?”

“Pay Zhurov back for what he did to Sasha. To all of the others. But I wait.” 

There was a set to his eyes, a tightening of his face that gave Cat a glimpse of a man who would take grim satisfaction from seeing Zhurov dead. It was a diabolic thing but Cat found herself unafraid in the face of it. Zhurov had created this dark angel of justice. More than earned it if even one percent of what Sergei had told her was true. 

Cat put her hand over his. “I hope you get to kill him.”

His expression shifted and Cat’s stomach dropped at the look he gave her, a hunger of a different kind in his eyes. “I hope so, too, Koshka.”

* * *

They finished eating while Sergei told Cat of his fruitless search for information about Zhurov.

“So you’ll be looking for him again tomorrow?” Cat asked.

He heard the same disappointment that she had had that morning. “Yes, but I can do it from my laptop. Property search, maybe some company records.”

“Oh, good. I mean,” Cat blustered, “I know you have weird hours. It’s ok.”

Sergei reached for her, drawing her into his lap again from where she had resettled on the couch to finish eating. He kissed her slowly, fingers creeping under her tee to stroke at the skin beneath it. “I want to be with you, too.”

The smile Cat gave sent a thrill through him from head to toe. “Good. Cause there’s some stuff that I want to talk about.”

“Okay,” he said, blinking as he tried to figure out where the conversation was going. “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about some of the things that have happened since I met you and I want to ask if you’re seeing a therapist.” 

Sergei’s mind faltered as he tried to find a connection between sex - what he thought Cat would talk about - and _therapy_. “No. Not, I... I go with Sasha and sometimes talk to her therapist, but that is about things Sasha needs or needs me to know.”

Nodding, Cat took a moment to think before going on, “Maybe it’s because of me, or maybe it’s because Zhurov is around, but sometimes I think you’re reliving bad stuff that’s... happened. It seems like pretty classic PTSD.”

“It’s not you,” he said, reflexively, then stopped to consider what else Cat was saying. He had been reliving memories of Zhurov, of looking for Sasha. Reliving and dreaming about it for a month, since he’d first learned his former boss was in New York.

“Could you see Sasha’s therapist?” Cat wondered, interrupting his thoughts. “You said she’s been good for Sasha.”

“Yes, I,” he shook his head, smiling in relief. “I can talk to her. I’ll call on Monday.”

“What’s funny?” Cat asked.

“I thought you would want to...” Sergei's smile faded. he should have learnt by now that Cat paid as much attention to what he didn’t say as what he did. 

Cat nudged him tenderly. “What?”

“Talk about why I can’t...” he swallowed. He was going to have to talk about it with someone, and soon. He wanted more intimacy with Cat and his thoughts and memories constantly interrupting was getting frustrating. “Be relaxed, when we touch.”

“Ahh,” Cat said, turning her body sideways so he wouldn’t have to look right at her. “Do you have an idea why you can’t?”

“So we are talking about it?” Sergei asked, to buy himself time.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to have sex with our clothes off until we do. That’s something you want to do, right?” Cat’s tone was light, playful, but Sergei could feel the tension in her body. 

“Yes.” He wrapped his arms around her waist, letting Cat’s head fall on to his shoulder. The words were there, he could feel them, but he was having trouble getting them to come together in a coherent explanation of what was going on in his head - because he knew it was his head, his cock worked just fine - in a way that made any sense at all. 

“Baby. Sergei,” Cat waited until he murmured an acknowledgement. “It’s ok if you don’t want to, or if you have mixed feelings or, or if you think you want to but then you have to stop.”

Sergei swallowed. He knew these things. But in the moment panic or shame overrode logical thought. 

“And it’s fine if we take things very slowly and just work on... little bits, little steps... And you just, you just have to say no or stop if things get bad or it’s not working out for you.”

Pressing his lips to Cat’s hair, Sergei let his eyes slip closed. Never, _never_ had he thought there was someone like Cat in the world and, even if he had, he would never have imagined that she would be willing to accept him just as he was. 

“Koshka,” he whispered. “I want you so much.”

Cat curled her arm around him, cupping the back of his head, holding him in place. “I know, baby,” she whispered back. “And I want you.”

“What if I can’t...”

Fingers massaging his scalp, Cat replied, “Then we’ll work on it. Go to therapy, do it in the dark, suspended from the ceiling -“ Sergei snorted. “Don’t mock it until you try it. Maybe bondage will be a magic cure.”

_Maybe_ , Sergei considered, his stomach dropping at the thought of being tied down. Maybe. 

“Until then, there are many many other things we can do together. Or apart. There’s always the old fashioned way.”

“Old fashioned way?” Sergei wondered. The hope Cat was giving him warmed his heart. And other parts of his anatomy.

“Y’know. Self love, rub one out, spank the monkey. My Mam always used to say wanking.”

“You mean... by myself?” _Rub one out_. He hadn’t heard that one before. 

“Sure. Why not? We can snuggle like this, get all worked up and then you can go take a shower and... wank.”

“Jerk off,” Sergei said to the top of her head. There was a definite pooling of blood in his groin. “What about you?”

“I’ve had a lot of practice at wanking. I’m an expert.”

He couldn’t help himself, Sergei began to laugh, jostling Cat against his chest. 

“What?” Cat asked, trying not to laugh, too. “You’re saying that I'm not? I’ll prove it,” she teased, reaching for the waistband of her jeans and popping the button. 

The laughter abruptly stopped as Sergei looked at Cat’s fingers undoing her pants. Cat looked up and saw where his attention was directed. After sliding the zipper down, she pushed her shirt up and ran a finger along the waistband of her lavender underwear. 

Sergei held his breath until her fingertips slid beneath the elastic. Hand resting on her knee, he inched up her inner thigh, middle finger caressing in circles. “Prove it, Koshka.”

Shifting, Cat leaned back into Sergei’s shoulder, reaching into her underwear. When she spread her legs further apart, he gripped her thigh, helping to hold it in place. 

Fingers working, Cat breathed in deeply, her leg twitching under his hand. Lips against her ear, eyes still fixed between her legs, Sergei nuzzled her hair. 

A soft grunt lodged in Cat’s throat, a ripple running through her body. Sergei found it incredibly erotic to be holding her while she stroked herself, feeling each tremble and twitch, listening to Cat’s breathing quicken, her ass squirming against his hard cock.

He pressed kisses to her neck, eyes still fixed on the rhythmic motions of her hand. Whispering encouragement, it took a while before Sergei realised he was speaking in Russian. 

“Don’t stop,” Cat murmured when he paused, feeling self-conscious.

After a moment of hesitation, Cat spoke again, “Please baby. Your voice winds me up so tight.”

“Are you wet?” Sergei wondered. 

“Very,” Cat replied. “Can’t help it, whenever I'm around you.”

“All the time?” He moved his hand up her thigh, long fingers rubbing the sensitive inner flesh. 

Cat mmmed, pushing deeper into her underwear. “All the time. Your voice, your body, your smile.” She paused to groan again, louder this time, “Your hands...”

“These hands?” Sergei wondered, fingers creeping closer to the apex of her jeans, watching as he reached with the index finger to trace the line of the zipper.

That Cat’s gaze was firmly fixed on the same place as his was evident in her whimper of acknowledgement, her motions becoming faster. 

Sergei let his hand cup hers through the fabric, his long fingers reaching further than hers, two fingers pressing against her seam. 

Cat’s jerk of response almost unseated her, Sergei’s other arm clutching her just in time. Grip firm, he held her other leg in place, his fingers augmenting Cat’s own, their motion growing more frantic.

“Do it for me,” Sergei encouraged. “I want to feel you come.”

Straining, head tipping back, body arching, Cat’s breathing became harder, a long moan building in intensity as her thigh began to shake in Sergei’s grip. He kept up the soft strokes as her body began to shudder.

“Come, Koshka. Come,” he urged. “Do it.”

His last words were well timed, Cat stiffened momentarily and then convulsed in his arms, her thighs pulling together, trapping both his hands as he kept her from sliding to the floor.

Murmuring over and over, Sergei held her tightly until the aftershocks eased, letting Cat come back to consciousness gradually. Hands stroked over her thighs as he laid soft kisses all along her neck and in her hair. 

Cat mewled and turned into Sergei’s chest, curling up in his arms, hand finally pulling from her underwear, intercepted immediately as he gripped her wrist. Guiding it to his mouth, Sergei sucked each of her fingers, licked over the palm and then nipped at Cat’s pulse point. 

With a giggle, Cat squirmed against him, “Sensitive.”

Sergei latched on to her tender, nearly translucent skin and sucked until there was a purpling mark left behind. When he released the love bite, Cat shivered in his arms. 

“Told you,” she said, gripping his shoulders as a second orgasm rippled through her. 

“Interesting,” Sergei observed. “It always like this for you?”

“Only when I get really worked up beforehand.”

Sergei experimented with her increased sensitivity, running his hands over Cat in different ways. Too light and she squirmed with discomfort. When he got it right she moaned and rubbed against him, very much like her namesake. He found himself wondering what it would be like to get her worked up, draw an intense orgasm from her and explore every inch of Cat’s naked skin while she was in this hypersensitive state. 

He wanted nothing more than to be able to strip them both naked and spend the rest of the weekend in bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been hanging on to this chapter for a while, hoping @lovestuck would post more of Bittersweet before I uploaded it, but I decided to put it out there for now.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, ain’t that a surprise? A new chapter. 
> 
> Did you know that gentle femdom is not a canonical tag on Ao3? Where’s all my gentle femdom girls at?
> 
> Dedicated, as always, to our Lady of the Word, @lovestuck.

Sergei looked up from his phone and spoke across the space where Cat’s socked feet and his met across the coffee table, ”Tomorrow.”

Spreading her fingers over the open book in her lap, she looked up at him from behind her glasses. “Tomorrow?”

The remnants of a casual breakfast lay scattered on the low table between them Cat in the armchair, the weak November sun dappling her shoulder, and Sergei, laptop balanced on his thighs as he read the message on his phone. 

“Sasha want to know if you’ll come to breakfast.”

It took her a moment to answer. “I don’t know. Isn’t it kind of your thing together? The two of you?”

“It’s her idea,” Sergei reassures. “She wants to see you.”

Cat sits quietly, considering the invitation and Sergei feels compelled to say, “I want you there. I want you to come.”

A cheeky glint lights up her eyes and the corner of Cat’s mouth curls just enough to hint at what her thoughts are. Sergei swallows and looks down at his phone, busying himself with typing. 

It’s hard to be sure, Sergei is ruddy, but Cat sees a suspicious rosy tone colour his complexion. The idea that her man giant would blush so easily fills her chest with a swell of affection. Curling her socked toes against his calf in a caress that is lacking in skin contact and yet feels lazily intimate Cat remembers seeing that shy redirection once before, in the workroom of her shop -

“Oh! Tomorrow the security team is coming by Cattails.”

“At eleven, yes?” Sergei asked. 

“Yes.” She should have guessed he’d know. 

“Can do breakfast first, then we go to the shop.” 

Sergei’s expression was unreadable and Cat wondered if he was suggesting they go together for her or for himself.

“Alright,” she replied, accepting his plan and his presence. “Should I make something?”

He grunted and typed into his phone, large fingers fast and precise across the tiny glass screen. Fingers that had cupped hers last night, sharing the wet warm heat as it grew between her legs, the purr of his voice against her neck nearly enough to make her come without even being touched. Her cunt contracted at the memory, an echo of the pleasure she’d wrought for him creeping up her spine.

“She asks for cornbread, if you can. And your recipe if you don’t ...” Stuttering to a stop, Sergei paused, eyes fixed on hers. “Cat?” 

“I can do cornbread.” Marking the spot in her book, Cat got up and made for the kitchen feeling Sergei’s gaze on her the whole way. She started pulling out ingredients and ventured a glance back to the couch to find him bent over the computer screen.

Sergei's presence in her apartment was a palpable thing, a slight pressure sliding over her skin that left her restless and tingling and hungry. It had been a struggle to keep her mind on the plot of her book just as it was difficult to calculate the ingredients for a double batch of cornbread. The ringtone of Sergei’s phone forced Cat to focus her attention on the recipe, determined not to eavesdrop. 

Not that she could have. Sergei spoke in rapid fire Russian and Cat let his words become a soothing background to her cooking. 

The slap of a closing laptop lid startled her and she turned, smiling softly as he carried their breakfast things into the kitchen and began running hot water into the sink for washing up. 

“Taking a break?” Cat asked.

“Done,” Sergei told her over his shoulder. “There were a few properties. I pass information to Kolya and he will follow up.”

“And then?”

Sergei squirted dish soap into the sink and turned off the tap. “Someone watch Zhurov.”

“Not you?” Cat wondered. 

“No. I watch Ellie. Zhurov is not the only bad guy in New York.”

“More than one person wants to hurt Ellie?”

Sergei rinsed the mugs and turned them upside down in the drying rack before answering. “She is Kolya’s. That makes her valuable.” 

The distaste for the idea that Ellie was a commodity was clear in his tone and Cat hesitated over what to say next. 

“I wash this?” Sergei asked, surprising Cat as he brushed her arm, reaching for the measuring jug she had used. 

“Yes. Thank you.” Sergei had come up beside her silently and his actions and the topic of their conversation reminded Cat of what he was. “Ellie’s fortunate to have you to protect her.”

“Yes,” Sergei agreed without a trace of false modesty. This time when he approached, he spread his hand over the small of her back. Cat shivered as he reached for the bowl and spoon and murmured, “And this?” 

Cat could feel the heat of his palm above the waist of her jeans and the barely suppressed hunger that she had been trying to ignore flared bright and warm, creating slickness between her thighs. “Yes,” was all she could manage in the moment. Returning to the sink, Sergei granted her senses a reprieve and she moved quickly to place the pans of cornbread in the oven, setting the timer.

A lightness came over her as she took in Sergei at the sink, slightly hunched, the shape of his back and shoulders outlined against the fabric of his shirt. Cat pulled herself up to sit on the counter, watching as he finished with the last of the dishes. 

When he turned towards her, wiping the water from his hands on a towel, Cat couldn’t help but grin.

“How was the batter?” She wondered.

“I like what you cook,” he replied bashfully. 

“Come here,” Cat said, holding her hand out to him. “You have it on your cheek.” Wiping up the pale traces of cornbread batter with her finger, Cat sucked her finger clean, grinning around the digit as the motion focused Sergei’s attention on her mouth. “Hungry?”

Placing a hand on either side of her, Sergei leaned in towards her, nudging the tip of her nose with his own. “How long?” He asked.

“For what?”

“To cook the breads?” 

The words washed over her lips and Cat could taste him in them. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Enough.” His lips moved over hers, softly biting and teasing, pulling away as she tried to draw him into deeper kisses until Cat growled and drew him close with hands gripping his hair.

Sergei pressed into her then, letting Cat wrap her legs around his thighs and hold herself against him. One of his hands cupped her behind, fingers digging into the soft cheek, the other tugged the hem of her shirt free and worked its way up the skin of her back. 

Her hands on his shoulders, Cat felt that some of Sergei’s tension had diminished, his movements surer than they had been since the incident in her kitchen that had ended in him walking out. Humming her pleasure, she traced the shape of his jaw with her thumbs, cradling Sergei’s face in her hands. Something about the gesture had him rubbing his hips into hers, slowly dragging over the centre seam of her jeans and eliciting a gush of wetness. Urged on by Cat’s throaty hums, Sergei slid his hand further under her behind, changing to angle and focusing the pressure of his movements on her clit. 

Cat couldn’t help the whimper that leaked out of her and into his mouth but was glad for it when his broad finger tips found the seam of her from behind and began brushing over her lips and rubbing the fabric of her clothes between the cheeks of her ass and over her anus. 

Making a trail to her ear with his lips, Sergei murmured. “I want you touch yourself again.”

The words ran down her spine with a tingle, an ache gathering in the lips of her sex. Despite their exchange from the night before, Cat was still surprised by the request. “Here? Now?”

He stiffened and Cat cursed her clumsiness. Sergei was exposing himself to her and now she had made him question that trust. “If you want,” He equivocated, “I want you to teach me.”

“Teach you,” she paused, looking for the right words to affirm his request, 

hand running up his arm, soothing. “Teach you how to touch me?” Their time together hadn’t left her with the impression that he was unfamiliar with the mechanics of making a woman come.

Pressing his temple to hers, Sergei looked to the hand stroking his bicep. “Teach how to be relaxed... when I...” the words caught in his throat. 

Cat held her breath, waiting for him speak, afraid to spoil the sanctity of confession.

“When I am with you, I want you to touch me, but I can’t. I don’t like even touching myself.” The shake in his voice ran through him and Cat cupped his face, cradling his cheek against her own.

“Baby,” Cat whispered, voice soft and full of the tenderness that welled out of her whenever Sergei cracked his facade. “I will show you how. I want to touch you. I want you to touch yourself.” Trailing featherlight kisses along his cheekbone, revelling in the brush of stubble and the scent of his skin she tenderly met his lips with her own and kissed him like he was the sweetest wine deserving to be savoured. 

She drew the tension from him slowly, letting their shared warmth soothe his anxiety. They remained that way until the buzzing of the oven timer intruded. Cat let it ring out and then tipped Sergei’s face in her hands, bringing her lips to his forehead. “Go wait on the couch for me.”

Heartbeats passed with him still in her grasp and then Sergei sighed, or moaned, before stepping away and turning towards the lounge. Cat watched him go, noticing the shuddering beat of her pulse for the first time. It was an intoxicating thing when a man who could break her a dozen ways put himself in her thrall.

Pulling the cornbread from the oven, spreading the butter over the top of each tiny golden loaf, Cat wondered at what Sergei might be thinking, feeling, as he waited for her. Did he regret his request? Or had acknowledging his need and accepting her help brought him some peace? The need to know had her hurrying, returning to butter to the fridge and licking the traces of slick sweetness from her fingers.

When she approached the couch, Sergei turned to follow her. He watched her move the coffee table out of the way. He watched her bring the armchair closer and closer until she nearly trapped his legs between it and the couch. Cat paused, taking in the tableau and adjusted the chair to offer the length of his legs more room and then began unbuttoning her jeans and sliding down the fly. 

Sergei watched her every movement, his face impassive, hands resting formally on his thighs. His body wasn’t stiff - Sergei was too practiced a fighter to hold himself rigid - but there was tension readable in every muscle. 

Pulling one leg free of her jeans, then the other, Cat then stepped across his legs and settled into the armchair. She slid forward until the base of her spine neared the edge and leant back placing one socked foot onto the couch beside Sergei’s knee. His gaze hovered somewhere about her navel until she nudged at his knee with with her other foot. “Take it off for me?” she asked, despite it not being a question. 

His fingers brushed over the hem of the sock and he pulled it gently down, the light touch raising goosebumps on her calf. 

“Thank you.” 

Putting her bare foot down beside his knee, Cat shifted her weight, offering Sergei the other sock, drawing his attention away as her fingers shifted to cup her sex through her underwear. “And this one?” she coaxed, each question not a question, instead a trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow into the shelter she offered.

Sergei discarded the second sock on the couch and cupped her ankle, lowering it gently back on to the couch’s cushioned edge. Trailing up her leg, his gaze froze on the sight of her finger moving slowly over the growing wet spot on her underwear. 

“You asked to watch,” Cat told him, her voice slow and honeyed, matching the pace of her movement, “And I thought why not let you see what you do to me, what you’ve done to me. How much you arouse me. Make me wet.”

Chest rising as he drew in a deep breath, Cat thought she saw a tremble in the big man’s hand. 

“Dripping.” Cat parted her lips through the fabric, pulling it taught so that he could see. “I’m so swollen it aches,” she squeezed one outer lip and then the other before changing the motion to drag fingernails over the cotton. 

This was just the warm up, Cat was no where near far enough lost in her own pleasure to miss the movement of his hand towards her ankle or the jerk of Sergei’s fingers when he arrested the motion.

So tightly wound he had no idea how to begin untangling himself. 

“Help me,” Cat requested. “Take these off.” Her thumb pulled at the waist of her panties. 

There was no hesitation, just a smooth fluid movement and he brushed over her hips, taking the elastic in his hands and dragging them down her legs touching Cat only to guide one foot from the garment, then the other. The damp fabric hit the floor as he set her foot back down, reluctance to lose contact clear in the way his fingers dragged slowly over the muscle and bone. 

“Leave your hand there,” Cat’s silky voice flowed around him, calling all of his attention back to her. Back to her and back to the fingers delicately petting the curls between her thighs. “I like the way you touch me.”

His response was tentative, the pad of his thumb brushed the inside of her ankle, but it raised goosebumps all over her skin. Cat could read how much he gentled himself for her, the strength of a lion held in check until his touch was as soft as a kitten’s paw. 

It caused her breath to hitch, the wanting response of her body paralysing the muscles of her chest until Sergei stroked her ankle again, his fingers shifting slowly upwards, pressing against the muscle of her calf.

“Wait,” she told him, parting her lips, finger dragging between her folds with a wet sound that held all his attention. “You wanted me to touch _myself_ ,” her finger dipped lower, gathering more moisture, “You didn’t ask if you could touch me. Don’t move,” she commanded as he made to pull his hand away. “Leave your hand on my ankle, but no more.”

Sergei’s touch relaxed again and with it he leant back further into the couch, the position of his body moving to mirror hers. With each command, Cat gauged how far under her thrall he was letting himself slip. 

“Watch.” Spreading her outer lips wide, Cat circled her entrance with a finger tip before gathering up the leaking juices. Sergei’s thumb drew circles on her skin in time with the motion of her own finger stroking around her clit.

“You want to touch me, don’t you baby?”

He replied with a nod, the grip on her ankle growing tighter. 

“Out loud,” she prompted, finger pausing, pulling lightly on the hood of her clit.

“Yes.” Sergei licked his lips, as if surprised by the shakiness of his own voice.

“Here, baby? Your fingers in my cunt? Or here,” she wondered, trailing wet fingers over her mound and up, lightly petting the curve of her stomach. “Or here?” With her free hand, Cat raised her shirt, displaying a taught nipple under lace that she began to stroke. 

Sergei licked his lips again and Cat watched patiently as he attempted to speak, closed his mouth and tried a second time. “Koshka, I want to...”

Cat worked hard to keep her body relaxed one hand cupping her breast while the other returned to her slick folds. “What I want is to see you touch yourself.”

The fingers flexing against her ankle were the only tell he gave.

“Just through your clothes.” Her voice was soft, a purr of a suggestion. “I want to see if you’re hard.”

There was a crease at the top of Sergei’s thigh. She thought she could make out the outline of him there but it could just be the fold of the fabric. 

It wasn’t. With his free hand, Sergei pulled the fabric taught, making the long, thick line of him stand out in relief. Cat found her muscles clenching tightly around just the thought of how it would feel to have him inside her, pushing a new wave of wetness from her body that she gathered up on her fingers, slicking her folds with it. 

He’d stopped looking at her, instead turning his head to look behind her, as if there was something on the wall that was more interesting than the sight of her spread open and dripping in front of him.

“See what you do to me?” Cat asked. “How the very thought of you makes me drench my panties. Look at me, baby, and see how much I want you to fill me up.”

Unable to resist her cajoling, Sergei’s gaze returned to the slick mess between her thighs. 

“Where do you like to be touched? Show me where I'm going to touch you when you’re ready for it.”

The hesitation was less this time, though his eyes were still on her, and his hand moved to squeeze what Cat assume was the head of cock, his fingers remaining there, rubbing against himself with short, firm motions.

Cat began alternating between teasing her clit and rubbing the sensitive rim of her entrance, her climax becoming a tangible thing that she could pursue into oblivion if she allowed it. “You look so thick, baby, so long. Wouldn’t you like to watch as you filled me up?”

Sergei nodded and then remembered her command - out loud. “Show me what it’s like. Put your fingers _inside_ ,” and his hand gripped his shaft as he forced the last word out on a strangled breath.

That Sergei was talking to her while he was stroking his erection made Cat simper in pleasure, barely keeping a hold on the thread of power that he had granted her.

“I need more, baby. I want to see you better. Why don’t you show me through your underwear?”

All movement in front of her stopped and Cat’s heart beat into her throat, fearing she had asked too much. But then he released his grip on her ankle and reached for his belt and he was unbuckling, moving to let his pants spread open to his thighs, grey boxer briefs pulled tight over his swollen cock, a damp spot over the outline of the head, shaft and head as thick as her wrist.

There was nothing she could do to stop the whimper that escaped her mouth or the need to dig her fingers deep inside herself and grind down on them. “Baby, you’re so beautiful.”

When he stroked his fingers down the length of it, Cat knew it was for her and her hips stuttered with the force of her inner muscles clenching around the idea that he would let her feel him one day. 

“So lovely,” She murmured with reverence. “You’re perfect, baby. Made for me, made to fill me, take me deep, and hard.” As Cat’s stroking sped up so did his own and she kept talking, wanting to keep the enchantment going long enough for them both to come.

“You’d be so good to me, baby, you’d destroy me if I asked you to or make me come so many times I’d have to spend the rest of the day in bed.” Cat rolled her nipple sharply between her fingers, clamping down in concert with the straining muscles clutching at her fingers. “Tell me, baby.”

Sergei whined with the pressure of it, his hand travelling the length of his erection with a steady rhythm, bracing his foot against her armchair, the spread of his knee against her ankle.

“Tell me,” Cat pleaded.

Eyes closed, his head fell backwards, resting against the couch. “Want to show you,” he squeezed out, as if the sight of her pounding into her pussy was too much to bear. “Want you to know... how much...”

“Show me.”

The words were a command, or a release, and Sergei pushed urgently at the band of his briefs, dragging them down to his base, palm gathering up the slickness that dripped from the head and using it to work himself over with rapid movements.

The sight took Cat’s breath away and she froze for a moment, pussy contracting so tightly around her fingers that it hurt and then she was climaxing, her body shaking, thighs closed tightly around her hand. All through it, she forced her eyes to remain open, determined to see it, see the sudden spurt of his thick white cum, spilling out over his trousers in long strands, coating his fingers in softer surges as he stroked the shaft, fingers straining to encompass himself.

Cat let her head rest back against the chair, cheek tilted to her shoulder, watching her man giant as his breathing slowed and his hand relaxed, still cupped around his penis and coated in his cum. Even soft, he was bigger than some penises she had held when erect and she felt a sudden desire to cradle him, soft and spent, in her own hand, to tell him with touch that he was indeed beautiful and desirable and that she had nothing to fear from him.

She waited, though, pulling one leg into her body, until his eyes opened and met hers. Smiling slowly, Cat held his eyes until he smiled, too. 

“Beautiful,” she whispered to him, reverent. He had to look away, a flush creeping up from the collar of his shirt.

Letting her feet hit the floor Cat leant forward, hands stroking from his knees up his thighs until one hand dragged in his cum. 

“May I?” Cat asked, holding her finger up for him to see himself coating it. Sergei’s chest vibrated with a disbelieving laugh until Cat sucked her finger clean and leant forward to press her lips to his. She had meant for it to be a short sign of affection but when his mouth opened to hers, she leant into it, wet fingers grasping at his hair while she braced herself on his thigh, careful to keep a space between them.

“Tell me,” she murmured, lips pressed to his, “You’ll do that for me again.”

“Just for you, Koshka. Only you.”


End file.
